


Season 3: My Way

by Seda



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Related, F/F, Fluff, Major character death but I ain't telling you which one, Plot-lots-of-plot, Season 3 fix-it, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-07-29 11:24:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 42,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16263218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seda/pseuds/Seda
Summary: An episode by episode re-write of Season 3. With the bits I could've lived without taken out, and the themes I'd have liked to have seen more of added to.Which is to say, no vampire Doc - no vampires at all for that matter (sorry Kate); and no *bloody* garden of Eden or angel nonsense (sorry also Abrahamic religions, go take a seat at the back of the bus for once).Things added in - more Wayhaught, obvs - including domesticity for sure, but also talking, and conflict, and the odd NSFW moment (because apparently I'm physically incapable of keeping these damn things clean), and all that good shit. And a tighter focus on Bulshar, revenants, and our core cast, particularly Wynonna Waverly and Nicole; each of whom return to their bad-ass strengths, with the men playing more of a minor supporting role.One chapter per episode, with one cheeky prologue chucked in to set things up.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I nearly titled this one, Season 3: Only Not Shit.
> 
> But then I realised hubris is a terrible terrible thing. :D
> 
> But yeah, it's grown out of my frustrations about what I saw as some of the plotting and writing holes in S3. The natural push back to that view of course is that writing a consistent and exciting 12 episodes of a story which works as its own thing whilst also keeping us rabid lesbo wayhaught fans satisfied is an impossible task. *You* see if you can do better, one might say.
> 
> Okay, I says, to the imaginary critics in my head, I shall.
> 
> Shall we see how I do?
> 
> I'll be dipping in and out of S3 canon for this. The main arc of the story will be different, but a lot of the key scenes in the actual show are gonna show up, albeit re-written to my satisfaction.

_Morning_

Wynonna broke into a shuffling run, a determined grimace set on her face. It _hurt._  Her back was killing her; her breasts were too full and sore, and stabbing pains through her hips fed her vague worry that her pelvis was somehow going to actually fall apart.

Waverly had googled when she'd complained about that, and, unhelpfully, informed her that during childbirth, it kinda literally had.

It all hurt so much. She mostly wanted to just crawl in bed with some good ice-cream and a really bad book: she was so  _tired_ , physically, mentally, and emotionally.

But Wynonna knew who and what she was, and what that meant. Namely that she didn't have the luxury of time before she started to train.

_Let it hurt,_  a part of her said. _What sort of mother sends away their new, perfect little baby anyway?_

She picks up the pace, trying, failing, to create an ache in her bones strong enough to drown out that of her heart.

 

_Noon_

The beast lay still in the sallow grass.

The light autumn wind felt like daggers on its decrepit skin, soft from too many years spent in the dark, in dank still fetid air.

The pale yellow sun glared down at it, hurting its milky eyes. They narrowed, and an arm moved: nothing happened.

The beast looked down at its mutilated arm, ringless, empty. It tried to curse, but it was a beast still, so it came out a roar. A jagged, primal, hateful sound.

The soulless eyes closed, and it made another wet gurgling sound from deep within its throat; and a gesture with its other clawed hand.

A wind whipped up from nowhere, then picked up speed, swirling loose stalks of grass and fallen leaves in a wide circle around the beast. It blew faster and faster, and the swirl narrowed and focussed into a manic twisting column, and the wind started to roar almost like the beast had before; the beast that was now crouching in the middle of the maelstrom, the beast that seemed to now somehow be _changing._

Its broad back thinned, and its thick yellowed skin fluttered then formed first into a hideous, mottled patchwork of gangrenous grey skin, thin and new and pulled too tight over fleshless bones; and then the skin smoothed, and the shape filled out, and the beast started to stand; a man's form starting to emerge as the air whipped and screamed around it. Naked and bent and hairless at first, and then as it straightened, it was clothed, and then behatted.

The wind slowed back to a swirl and then died completely, leaves dropping in a dry rustle at the figure's feet, leaving the fields quiet and still again.

 

Bulshar stood, staring in the direction of Purgatory. Human again. Human in every perceptible way, except perhaps, for his pale, pale eyes. Dead, and cold; but if you were to look close enough, holding a tiny spark within, of pure, insane, _hate._

 

_Night_

Nicole sat in bed under the low sloping eaves of the homestead, fiddling with the alarm on her phone, and waiting for Waverly to join her.

Ridiculously, she was nervous. How many times had they shared a bed? But a lot had happened over the last few weeks, and with so much going on, there hadn't been a lot of time for talking.

When Waverly wandered into the room with her mouth full of toothbrush, to pick something up from the dresser, she looked over; and stopped in her tracks. Nicole's jittery mood must've shown, because her eyes softened, and then in lieu of being able to say anything, Waverly winked at Nicole. Her cute, face-crumple of a wink, aiming for re-assuring more than sexy, but managing to hit both regardless.

Nicole's heart clenched with love, and she felt a real smile break out on her face, and saw that returned in Waverly's eyes; who found what she was looking for and wandered back off to the bathroom.

On her return she switches out the light, climbs into bed, then they turn and fold themselves into each other, arms wrapping around and bodies entangling with a surge of relief.

“Hey you” Nicole murmurs.

“Hey.”

“You tired?”

“Mm. A little.”

“Yeah. It's been...it's been a hell of a few days.”

“Hell of a few weeks, Nicole. Hell of a _year_.”

“Mmm.”

They're both quiet, mulling over the understatement of that. Nicole's hand moves quietly back and forth on Waverly's shoulder, and Waverly's thumb unconsciously mirrors the movement, stroking the bare strip of skin her hand has found at Nicole's waist.

It feels good. Really good, to just lie here, in the dark and quiet and peace, and let their ravaged souls heal a moment. Nicole turns her face a little towards Waverly, and feels her do the same. She can feel the warmth of her breath on her mouth, and though she can't see, she knows they're both looking at each other; and she can see in her mind's eye if not in the darkness of the room the need of that look.

As if on a signal they both move, and their lips connect.

She kisses Waverly, and Waverly kisses her back, and Jesus, it feels so _good._  Her lips are so soft, and her kisses are so tender, so soft, so loving. She kisses like Nicole is the air that she breathes, she kisses like she can never get enough of her, she kisses her like...

_Like she kissed Rosita?_ an ugly voice says. It pulls Nicole out of the moment, and it pulls her bodily back in a flinch.

They're silent a second. One of Waverly's hands comes up and tentatively strokes her cheek.

“I'm sorry...”

“God. Nicole, you've got nothing to be sorry for. _I'm_ sorry.” Waverly's voice is a chorus of hurt. Sadness and regret and shame.

Nicole ducks her head down against Waverly's neck then, as Waverly's hand slips round the back of her head and starts to stroke her hair. She starts to speak, and her tone is still sad, but softer, more conciliatory now.

“We don't have to do anything, okay? Now, or...or any time. I don't need anything from you, Nicole. I don't need your forgiveness even. I certainly don't deserve it. Just. Can you stay tonight? Can I just...just hold you?”

Nicole buries herself closer into Waverly's embrace as an answer. She can feel tears starting to rise again. _God, not again_ , she thinks. _Can't you stay strong on this just for once?_ She counts her breath slowly in and out, and knows that Waverly is patiently letting her. Just holding her, the slow strokes and soft scratches in her hair grounding her, until she's sure she can speak without her voice wavering.

“It's not that I haven't forgiven you Waves. I have. It just…”

She sighs.

“It just really hurts.”

They're quiet again.

“Yeah. I'm sorry.” Waverly whispers into the night. “I'm so so sorry.”

 

* * *

 

_Morning_

Jeremy wanders into the re-commandeered Sheriff’s offices first thing. It's only just gone eight in the morning, far earlier than the modest stipend that Dolls had managed to scrape together Black Badge funds for was paying him for.

He had his headphones on, and was holding a take-out coffee, which he promptly threw half in the air and half down his shirt when he jumps out of his skin at the sight of Dolls already sat and buried in work.

He takes his headphones off, and just stands there, dripping.

Dolls raises one eyebrow.

“Morning, Chetri. You're early.”

Jeremy looks pointedly at the papers strewn all around Dolls, clearly having been worked on for some time. Dolls shrugs at the unanswered question; and then they both grin wryly in mutual acknowledgement. They both know there's a limit to what they can do, but, shitty government pay or no, they were damn well gonna do their absolute most.

Jeremy took his seat, opened up his laptop, and with only the sound of him rubbing ineffectually at the coffee stain with a rapidly deteriorating tissue, they set to their respective work in steady silent concentration.

 

_Noon_

Doc's world is too big again.

Last night he'd narrowed it down to the size and shape of a glass of whiskey.

But this morning the periphery has come back into view, too big and bright and accusing. Too full of lost daughters, and a tangled thing he couldn't understand with Wynonna, and nothing beyond all that to look forward to but an eternity in hell.

He has the nervous jitters and can smell on his own breath the rotten pear chemical reek of a serious hangover. His head is crowded full of unwelcome thoughts and his heart is full of...

_No_ _. Real men don't feel,_ he says to himself _. Gunslingers can't afford to feel._

He takes the bottle of whiskey without looking, and pulls a deep swig from it as he walks across Shorty's to open up. Starts narrowing down his world again.

 

_Night_

Bulshar has risen, and Bulshar calls.

 

* * *

 

_Morning_

In the rubble of Aleppo a man dressed in black, with scars on his face and a beret on his head, looks up. His face twists in a mockery of a smile.

“Master?”

 

_Noon_

A red-faced, pinstripe suited, evidently well fed man looks up in surprise from his lunch at a private member's club in London.

It's a huge deal, his biggest yet. The paperwork between the arms company and the rogue government is going to be interesting, to say the least, but he's got his own special talents for that sort of thing.

Still, he's got his priorities.

“Would you gentlemen please excuse me?”

 

_Night_

The thin, half-dressed, a little more than half-insane guard looks up from where he's been steadily beating the latest prisoner in the gloom of kerosine light. The jungle is hot and humid, and he doesn't care much for that. He cares still less for who is buying and selling the drugs.

What he cares about is _discipline_ , and the chance his current employers give him to exercise it.

The broken bloody mess of a body at his feet gurgles, but he ignores it, looking up, eyes glazed and fixed on an unseen distance.

“Master?"

Eight more are called, and eight more hear the call.

 

* * *

 

_Morning_

Waverly's in her dressing gown when she hears footsteps enter the kitchen.

“Hey sweetie, I made you a - _Wynonna_?”

Wynonna takes Nicole's coffee before her sister can react, grinning widely at her look of shock.

“Something the matter, baby girl?”

“You're - ” Waverly gestures at Wynonna's, who is clad in running gear, bright eyed, and covered in a fine sheen of sweat. “And it's seven in the morning! I didn't know you knew there _was_ a seven in the morning.”

“Well, you know, the early bird catches the - ew, gross. What sort of expression is that?”

She takes a gulp of the hot coffee, wincing as it burns her mouth.

“The early bird gets into shape all the to better kick Bulshar's arse, it should be.”

“Who are you, and what have you done with my sister?” Waverly's tone is dry, but she's got a twinkle of a smile in her eyes, as without discussion they head out to the porch to drink their coffees together.

 

_Noon_

A tap on the door.

“Dolls?”

“Officer Haught. What can I do for you?”

“Have you got some time for me?” She casts a quick look at Jeremy's eager face. “In private? It’s kinda, ah, personal.”

 

_Night_

They sit, tangled together on Nicole's couch, half watching the local evening news, mostly just enjoying the feeling of each other's body and touch after another long day.

The programme ends, and the commercials come on. The second is an overly stylised perfume advert, with a bride in full gown and veil running improbably aesthetically down church steps.

It's not much of a reminder, but Nicole still feels Waverly stiffen next to her nonetheless.

Nicole takes a deep breath. Now is as good a time as any, she supposes.

“Wave?”

The reply comes back instantly, full of frustration and no small amount of hurt.

“Why didn't you just _tell_ me?”

 

* * *

 

_Morning_

Doc's world is still small. He's kept it small for days now.

The till is out close to four hundred dollars. Half the taps have run dry, and apart from putting the requisite empty beer glasses over them, he can't seem to find the wherewithal to do anything about that. And even he can smell that his shirt stinks. _He_ stinks.

He doesn't care. Keep the drink a-coming, keep his focus small.

 

_Noon_

Wynonna comes striding in, the first customer of the day. Perhaps the last too, given how she shuts the door behind her and slides up the lock.

“Why, Wynonna, to what do I owe this _rare_ and unexpected pleasure?”

“This is bullshit Doc. I've been letting you wallow, but this is some straight up bullshit.”

She's round the bar, yanking first at his sleeve then at him bodily. Doc tries to pull away, but his movements are drowned in drink and he's too slow, and all he can do is half stagger as Wynonna pulls and shoves him up the stairs. He registers too late what she's doing when she manhandles him into the small ugly bathroom and into the shower, and turns the water on full blast, him fully clothed or no.

The shock of the cold water brings him spluttering to his senses.

“Wynonna! I am a _man!_  You have no part in this!”

Wynonna doesn't know if he's talking about the shower, or his descent into self-pitying alcoholism; neither does she particularly care.

“Not right now you're not, Doc. You're acting like a little boy. You get your shit together, you hear me? We need you at your best for this fight, do you understand? _I_ need you at your best.”

Doc's eyes close as the water starts to warm up. She sees the dark circles under his eyes, and registers just how worn he looks, and for a second Wynonna's voice softens.

“She needs you at your best too, okay? Now. Shower and shit and shave, or whatever it is you ‘men’ do. I'll have a coffee waiting for you downstairs in a half hour.”

 

_Night_

Black Badge Offices, and for the first time since Alice was taken, they're all gathered together. The office is brightly lit, and there are boards covered in scribbles, old photos and arcane symbols and diagrams.

Dolls leans on a desk, arms crossed, exuding silent, calm, readiness.

Jeremy is buzzing about, futzing with his laptop and a projector, getting the image focussed just right on a whiteboard.

Waverly is sat on a desk, her own nervous energy palpable but held steady and in check by Nicole's calm presence sat right next to her. She's in her uniform and so is trying to maintain officer standards, but she's sat close to her girlfriend, one hand resting subtly on Waverly's lower back.

The door bursts open and Wynonna walks in, making an unnecessary entrance out of it, grinning her come-and-get me-fuckers grin, and nodding her head and eyebrows up to each in the group.

“What up.”

She flings herself down into a wheeled chair, and scoots it to form the head of their loose circle whilst Doc follows in behind her, now sober, clean shaven around his mustasche, and looking more than a little sheepish.

“Evenin’s salutations.” he says as he first tips then removes his hat, and takes his own seat.

Dolls straightens, and clears his throat.

“Thanks for coming everybody. So, ah, Earp? You want to lead?”

Wynonna grins up at her sister.

“Littlest Earp?”

Waverly rolls her eyes, but fondly, and with a quick squeeze of Nicole's thigh, hops off the desk and goes over to the laptop.

“So. This is what we know so far.”

 

* * *

 

_Morning_

Waverly swims slowly out of nameless dreams into an easy awakening. There's light coming in through the window, but still thin and pale: it must be early. How early she'd need to look to see, but she's not moving, not from the warm cocoon she finds herself in of Nicole at her back, and Nicole’s arm around her waist, and Nicole’s deep slow sleeping breaths tickling the back of her neck.

She lets her eyes fall shut again, and thinks back to the evening before. It had felt good, getting everybody together, and finally starting to make a plan. They were all a little scared, she could tell that despite the many and various concealing tactics each had employed. But the fear she’d been feeling had been, well, if not lessened, at least reassured by being alongside others who felt the same.

Her, Nicole and Wynonna had decamped afterwards to Shorty's for a few drinks, with Doc fulfilling barkeep duties and for once staying off the liquor himself. Waverly had guiltily enjoyed the low level bickering between her sister and her girlfriend as they had all sat together, sinking beers and whiskeys and wine. The antagonistic relationship between the two sometimes exasperated her, but last night it had just made her giggle. It had felt like coming home.

And then they had all come home, back to the homestead, and she and Nicole had fallen asleep together, simply and easily and happily in love and like nothing bad had or ever would happen.

So now something about this morning felt like a fresh start.

She still hadn’t moved but her wakefulness must have registered somehow, because she felt Nicole stir at her back. Her arm tightened for a second around her waist, and she felt a kiss between her shoulders, and then Nicole rolled onto her back, Waverly rolling with her just in time to watch indulgently her morning stretch and yawn.

“Mornin’ Waves.”

Nicole’s voice was still thick with sleep, her eyes were half-closed and puffy, and her hair was sticking up in odd places.

Waverly thought she was the most beautiful sight she'd ever seen.

“Morning, you. Sleep okay?”

Nicole hummed affirmatively, shuffling back against the pillows as they found their morning position; Nicole on her back, Waverly curled into her, lying half against, half on her.

She's wide awake now, and though she tries to let Nicole come to wakefulness slowly and naturally, she can't seem to stop a hand from slipping under Nicole’s tank top, and starting an idle stroke and caress of her stomach.

“Mmm. That's nice.”

“Yes. It really is.”

They just lie in the contented sleepy silence for a while, enjoying the quiet and the touch, as Waverly’s hand widens the path of its touch, running up to Nicole’s ribcage, and then back down as far as the waistband of her shorts. She can feel Nicole’s skin quiver and twitch when she runs her fingers over her sensitive spot, just above her right hip-bone; Waverly smiles in recognition and satisfaction.

“What time is it?” Nicole's voice sounds a little more awake now, with a husky note in it that causes Waverly's smile to widen to a grin. She’s waking up in other ways too, it seems.

“I don't know. Early, I think. Why?”

She's looking up at Nicole, who turns a little in their embrace, and looks right back at her.

“You know full well why.”

It’s a serious voice, but there’s a tease in Nicole’s eyes, and Waverly feels her stomach drop in love, and then feels another baser sensation called, lower down.

They gaze at each other for a long, silent moment, eyes locked and speaking of emotion and desire, and then they lean together; and then they kiss.

It’s a slow, unhurried, morning kiss. Cracked dry lips gradually warming each other up, bodies turning and pressing unconsciously closer, hands stilled and just feeling, pulling.

Then there's that awful moment again; Waverly feels it happen a split second before Nicole flinches and breaks the kiss. She opens her eyes and watches Nicole in trepidation and fear, but sees that this time Nicole holds herself still, not pulling back any further, her eyes closed, a small crease of a frown on her brow; just breathing.

For a second, their love is hanging at a precipice.

And then Nicole opens her eyes and looks searchingly into Waverly's, and then it’s falling, tumbling, because Nicole moves and kisses her again, hungrily, deep, and it’s like they’re free falling over and down a waterfall because Waverly feels blood rush through her veins as she kisses her back, wild and a little desperate, as Nicole pushes her on her back, and rolls on her, and takes her face in both her hands, and kisses her hard, and now it's like she's plunged deep below the cool waters of their connection because oh god the weight of her feels so _good_ , and the feel of her pushing a thigh between Waverly’s own is such a _relief_ , she feels she could almost drown in it, drown in Nicole’s passion and desire.

She pulls Nicole’s hands down from her face and closes them around the hem of her camisole, and Nicole doesn’t miss the instruction but pulls it up and off of Waverly, awkward and tangling as she tries to keep the kiss going through the movement, and there's hair caught in their mouths when they reconnect, they pull and push it out and then their lips and tongues crash back together and Waverly pushes and kicks her own pyjama bottoms down, and then Nicole’s, and they’re both struggling and getting in each other’s way to pull off Nicole’s tank, and then Waverly’s hands are touching, grasping, smoothing everywhere they can on Nicole's warm bare skin, and their bodies are rocking together, and straining, and between placing kisses down her neck, her chest, her breast, Nicole is breathing out, _Waverly, oh, Waverly._

Waverly feels a hand slide down between her thighs, and good _god_ she'd missed this. It feels so good like this already, but she manages to somehow stutter out through the incoherence of her need, “Ni- Nicole - please go - go in”, and then her next sound is a long, primal moan, because Nicole does, pushing two fingers easily and deep inside, and pressing her thumb further up again against her, and Waverly nearly comes right there and then at the incredible dual sensation of it. But they still a second, and Nicole looks in her eyes, serious now, completely focussed, her face a little flushed, her eyes roving over Waverly's with an expression that looks an awful lot like love.

“Y'okay?”

“Yeah. _Yeah_.”

The angle’s a little awkward for a second, but then they readjust, and Waverly manages to slip her own hand down to touch Nicole where they both need her to too, and then Nicole rocks her hips, pushing herself down onto Waverly's hand, and providing a further push to her own fingers inside Waverly, and then she pulls back, then thrusts again harder, and they both _groan._  And so they move, back and forth, Waverly's hips chasing the movement, her free hand grasping at Nicole, both of them gasping and lost in the overwhelming sensation of it.

It’s been so long, and it is so goddamned _good,_  it can’t last much longer. And so it doesn’t, Nicole coming first with a choked off cry and a jerk of her hips, which sets Waverly off shaking and shuddering through a long, whole body orgasm in reply. Her head lifts off the pillow to nestle into Nicole's neck as she does, whimpering a wordless prayer of thanks for Nicole, that they're still together, that they're still, somehow, okay.

Then it's over. The morning's stillness falls back down on them, as Nicole collapses back down too, deep panting breaths gradually slowing, quiet semi-voiced exhalations that show her at her softest. Waverly loves her so much like this, loves this precious secret time between them when Nicole is just so open and trusting, the contact of skin to naked skin a physical analogue to the closeness of their souls.

Nicole must feel the moment too, because she doesn't make any move to roll off of Waverly like she usually would. She just places one tender kiss to the skin where she fell, and then turns her head, and lays it down on Waverly's shoulder.

Waverly wraps one arm around her shoulders, and tangles the other hand in her sweat damp hair. Nicole's heavy lying on her like this, almost pure dead weight. But for all that, Waverly feels like for the first time in a month, she can finally breathe.

 

_Noon_

Wynonna exits the shower, wraps her body and her hair in luxurious thick towels, and wanders off to her dresser to find something suitably unsuitable to wear, something to torture Doc and Dolls with.

She catches herself singing snatches of some god awful pop song she'd been listening to on her run, music she'd not be caught dead listening to usually. She realises she is actually in as good a mood as she can remember since it all went down. Her run had gone well, she felt nearly back in her old shape: and it felt good to have a solid plan in place, to have her team in place.

“Set 'em up, and I'll shoot 'em down.” she drawled to herself, shooting finger guns as she ambled round her room, opening and shutting drawers.

It wasn't the _most_ sophisticated plan, granted. Her and Doc were leading on taking out whatever stray revenants they could, with Jeremy on technical support, whilst Waverly, Dolls and Nicole used their respective occult, Black Badge and police sources to research Bulshar's threat further.

But it was a plan nonetheless, one which gave her clear direction, and for that at least she was grateful.

She rummaged around in her underwear draw, still talking to herself.

“Come out come out pre-pregnancy bra, wherever you are. Great big mamma boobs begone, I'm back with the c-cups baby - ”

Her hand closed on soft terry towelling, and she froze.

She pulled the item out, and looked at it.

It was a tiny baby-grow, with letters spelling out 'My Mommy's a Badass’ right across the middle in red gothic print.

Waverly had bought it somewhere online when they had both been struggling to accept the weirdly accelerated pregnancy as a blessing, or as a reality at all for that matter. When it had arrived in the mail they'd both fallen apart with laughter, imagining the reaction of the town to Wynonna toting around a tiny baby clothed in this. They'd ended up wiping away tears of mirth, and Wynonna had given Waverly as close a hug as she could with her bump; and they'd both politely ignored the fact that the tears that continued to stream down their faces were maybe a little heavy for laughter.

She held the baby-grow up to her face, and smelt it.

It smelt of nothing. Nothing warm and human and sweet like she still remember Alice had, anyhow. Only the shop bought smell of cleanliness, the bland anonymous scent of their stupid, naive hope that everything would somehow be okay.

For the second time, she cried hot desperate tears into Waverly's gift. And this time she couldn't even pretend they were from laughter.

 

_Night_

Ten men sat waiting in a dark empty room. Candles and a fire in a brazier threw light enough to make out their silent, patient faces, if not to light the dark corners or high ceilings of the abandoned warehouse.

A door scraped open, and an eleventh joined them. Tall and broad, clad in jungle fatigues, with heavy gold rings on his fingers and a thick chain round his neck, he registered the group, and then the final empty chair.

He took his seat. Smiled a sadistic smile, revealing diamonds in his teeth. Blood diamonds, sourced from misery and violence and the fear of the poor and desperate families that he'd been living off.

“The master?”

A thin, cloaked figure emerged out of the shadows. Eleven men bowed their heads, held their left hands out and moved them in a complicated sign of supplication.

He spoke, his voice thin and cold as the prairie winds that were blowing in the brutal Purgatory winter.

“Thank you gentlemen for joining me.”

One of the eleven, the scar-faced man in black stood. With head still bowed and eyes averted, he asked.

“What is our master's instructions? What is his plan for his unworthy disciples?”

“The plan?” Bulshar laughed, a weird mirthless sound ending in a cruel smile.

“The plan is that we make them _suffer_.”

 


	2. Episode 1: Secret Histories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A massacre, memories; and Bulshar makes a move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did anyone else want a little bit more of Nicole and Dolls' backstories?

Beer is _nice_.

Wynonna Earp had a complex life, but she could be a simple soul at times. The phrase ‘beer is nice’ circled round and around like a song stuck in her head, as she flirted and drank her way around Pussy Willows, making enough of a ruckus that the resident revenants couldn't help but notice her presence, and register her inebriation.

She was only supposed to be acting drunk, really. She'd had one beer when she'd got there, just to help with the nerves she told herself. After she’d practically inhaled that first one she thought her adrenaline was running high enough she probably needed a second to have the normal calming effect you'd get from one. But then the sharp hoppy flavour and refreshing coldness of the over-priced craft brew she'd picked was such a great counterbalance to the club's heat and the sweet stench of the dancing girls’ perfume mingling with the clientele's testosterone sweat, she'd had another.

And then, well it had felt so good to be even acting kicking back and enjoying herself, she'd ordered one more. With a whiskey chaser. Dolls was around in the shadows somewhere; she knew he'd be glaring disapprovingly at her, but she equally knew he couldn't intervene without blowing both of their cover.

“What better acting than method acting, am I right or am I right?”

The john sat on the stool to her left stared at her confusedly, with the woozy concentration of the seriously drunk.

“Whut? Actin’ whut?”

He smiled a snaggle-toothed smile at her, hopefully.

Wynonna patted him on the shoulder. “Another time, Joe. With that silver tongue you'll charm all the other ladies I'm sure.”

She slipped off her stool and headed over to the mechanical bull. “Time to get this shit-show on the road. And what better way than...Hey there!” she caught the attention of the operator, and waggled her eyebrows. “Does your big strong bull need a good ride?”

Four minutes and twenty two seconds later she's gifted the swift sobering up that comes of being thrown bodily out of the club, and landing face down in the back-alley snow. With nothing but a circle of revenants to keep her company, taking turns to taunt and mock.

_Standard issue revenant threatening bullshit,_ she thought to herself.  _Very menacing I'm sure._

“You know, I'm taking the night off! Don't you clowns ever take the night off?”

But then.

“All it took to break the heir was a frickin’ pregnancy.”

_I'm not_ _frickin `_ _broken_ , the Earp inside her said, and hauled her to her feet.

“Well I'm not pregnant any more.”

She lashes out a hard and instinctive kick to the revenant behind her, surprising him, then spins her whole weight back into a punch in the face of the one in front of him; and the fight was on.

“Beer. is. nice!” she said, punctuating each blow with a word. “Fights. are. fun! I'm the - ” she paused to execute a roundhouse kick, snapping the revenants head back and leaving him crumpling to the ground “crazy chick with a gun!”

_Except - where's the gun?_ she thought, as she danced her way through the brutal ballet of life and death that she'd been training for.

With most of the revenants down, and one running, Dolls finally makes an appearance, and thank God, brings Peacemaker with him. She feels a surge of relief and warmth towards him, and to her own surprise seemingly finds time to give him a quick kiss on the cheek before haring off after the escaping revenant.

 

Up on the roof of Pussy Willows, Waverly is peering down the sights of an absurdly over-specified sniper rifle.

Nicole would never say it out loud, because gun safety is a real and genuine issue, and weapons that kill should never ever be taken lightly or frivolously.

But _damn,_ Waverly looks hot with a gun.

“Focus, Nicole” she murmurs to herself, sighting her own firearm on a likely spot below.

“What?” Waverly asks. Then, “Hey - ” as they both spot the revenant sprinting around the corner. Then “Yesss!” as her shot catches him, and spins him round. Then, “Hey!” again, as a second shot rings out, and the revenant drops.

“Hey! Did you _have_ to shoot him again, Nicole?” Waverly asks, more than a little offended.

“Ah...safety first?”

“Oh okay then, Little Miss Sharp Shooter, why didn't you fire when we first saw him?”

Nicole grins sheepishly at her girlfriend.

“Wait - did you just _let me have first shot_?”

“Erm. No?”

Nicole smiles again, and just shrugs, knowing she’s been rumbled. The indignation falls from Waverly's face, to be replaced by a softer look of exasperated affection.

“You're lucky you're so pretty, Officer Haught.”

Down below, Wynonna puts the final bullet through the revenant's head, whilst up on the roof, lit by the gaudy neon of the strip-joint’s sign, and both smug in the knowledge that whatever way you look at it, each of them got a good solid hit in, Waverly and Nicole lean into a kiss.

“Yo! PDA! Debrief, Shorty’s, half an hour!”

Waverly falls back from the kiss, laughing more at the resigned expression on Nicole’s face than the fact of getting caught.

“Come on, you. I’ll make it up to you later, huh?”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

 

* * *

 

Across town, the scar-faced man stands, his arms behind his back, his chin up and chest out in arrogant military pose. His ten cult brethren sit on chairs facing him, waiting for him to speak. Their body language is just as varied as they are, speaking of a range of attitudes from ticking fidgeting eagerness, to bored sullenness, right through to open challenging disdain.

“The Master has given us his orders. And he has put _me_ in charge.”

Some of the men shuffle in their chairs. One of their youngest, a lanky looking man in reality not much more than a boy, in a cheap suit and with grease slicked hair, coughs an audible “bullshit” into his hand. Then winces, and starts shaking, and falls to his knees, clutching at his head.

“Aaaahh! Make it stop, ahh fuck that hurts fuuuck please make it stop!” 

Bulshar steps forward from the shadows, one hand raised. Then drops the hand, and the suited man slumps to the floor, still groaning.

“Do you question my decisions?”

“No Master. I’m sorry Master. Forgive me Master.”

The scar-faced man clears his throat, as Bulshar steps back, watches the youth pull himself back up to his seat, wiping sweat from his ashen face with a gaudy yellow handkerchief.

“You already know that the townsfolk are to suffer. We concentrate on the descendents of the Old Families. But if there is collateral damage of the newer settlers in the process, it’s not the end of the world. Yet.” He smiles a mirthless smile and is rewarded with a smattering of laughs.

“But first. We want the descendant of the accursed _thief_ Earp to see what we’re doing, and to know that she’s helpless to stop it. We want her to suffer, but we want her to taste and see and live her failure first. So, _she_ is our first target.”

He turns to a table, picks up a set of folders, and starts giving them out.

“I’ve studied her movements, and these are your assignments. Five teams of two, five ways to the Heir. Each should be successful, together we can’t possibly fail. It’s been a long time since we’ve worked together, men. And there’s nothing like some honest competition to bring out a man’s best. Let me see who can get to her first.”

“And what about you?” asks a thin, grimy, wild haired one in a whining tone.

The scar-faced man puts his black beret back on his head, straightens it.

“I have been given _special_ orders.” His mockery of a smile is back. “A massacre, to celebrate and honour our Master’s return.”

“Done right, this time, though?”

The man flinches at the threat in the cold voice from the shadows, puts an involuntary hand to his scarred face.

 "Yes master. This time done right.”

 

~~~

 

_'Cause I gave you all I got to give, and no that ain’t no way to live, I told that devil, to take you back. I told that devil to take you back._

 

~~~

 

Nicole wakes to light slanting in through the window. They must’ve forgotten to close the blinds last night, so hurried were they to fall into bed together, to fall into each other.

She takes her time looking at Waverly, sleeping peacefully still, looking so beautiful in the golden morning light; and her heart just aches with love.

She remembers that feeling right from the start. She remembers the first time it had hit her so hard she was practically left reeling, that time at Shorty's wake; remembers being almost shocked at the strength and completeness of the feelings she'd had for this girl she barely even knew.

It had been so strong from the start it was difficult to say that she felt it stronger now. But if not a greater love, it was certainly a love that had matured, and deepened; grown more solid and unbreakable with every challenge they faced, and every hurdle they'd overcome. She really _knew_ Waverly now, understood the full depths of her beauty as a person; understood her flaws too, and still loved her. Loved her even more for them, if it were possible. For the light she still brought to the world, in spite of all the darkness she'd lived through.

Nicole wasn't sure she handled her own dark secrets quite so well.

She doesn’t move for a long time, just looking at Waverly, and thinking. She’s had a lot to think about, recently.

“I’ve got to tell you something, Wave.”

She’s whispering, and watches her sleeping lover carefully, for any sign that she’s waking up. Seeing none, continues.

“But I don’t know how. I need to get it straight in my own head first. Figure it all out. Can you understand that?”

She sighs. This is no good. _One day at a time, Nicole_ , she tells herself.

She needs contact, the only way she can communicate sometimes, and so reaches a hand out to rest on Waverly’s. She’s careful to place it gently, but she sees the first flicker of an eyelid, and hears the quiet _hnn_ sounds Waverly makes when she’s slowly coming to, with another rush of love. Nicole pushes down her sombre thoughts, and lets the warmth and happiness of their renewed connection rise back to the surface.

“Morning, Waves. Morning, bonus blankets.”

 

* * *

 

_Arizona, 1992_

 

Small children run and yell and chase each other round the playground, round the swings, up the climbing frame, and back down again.

On the top of the climbing frame is one lone boy, about seven or eight years of age. He’s been climbing up, down, around the inside and then outside of the frame; and now stands on top of the structure, an isolated but strangely noble figure: twelve feet in the air, and ignoring the children below as if they were on a different planet. He’s thin, but tall for his age, and doesn’t seem remotely phased by the height, or his precarious perch, two battered tennis shoes standing firm and steady on two thin metal bars.

A man sitting on a bench at the edge of the playground, all corduroy trousers, wire glasses, and fraying patched suit jacket, is watching him.

The boy sits carefully back down on the climbing frame, and then, testing his grip, rocks back and forwards for a second. Then without further hesitation twists, and drops, but catches his fall with a firm grip on the bars.

The man looks at his watch, and makes a note of how long the boy hangs for. Then another, with an impressed raise of his eyebrows when the boy drops to a single hand grip.

The boy pulls himself back into a double handed grip, pulls his legs up, and then back, and then kicks himself into an almighty swing, launching himself in a wide arc up and away from the climbing frame, completing a full twist and somersault in the air and landing with both feet planted firm on the floor, with only a hint of a stumble. The man’s jaw drops, and for a second he forgets his notes and just stares.

Back on earth, and the other children finally seem to pay him some notice. A loose group of older boys gather around him, chanting together.

“Dolly Dolls, stupid-name-Dolls, where’s your sister to play with her Dolls.”

The boy speaks, his voice clear and calm.

“I ain’t got no sister and you know it.”

“Dolly Dolls, Zavvy Dolls, why’s your stupid name so stupid?”

The boy, Dolls, just crosses his arm and looks straight at the biggest one of the bunch. He’s red of face and snotty of nose, and is seemingly getting more and more irritated by the younger child’s refusal to rise to the teasing. He takes a step forward and adds in as menacing tone as a ten year old can manage.

“ _Monkey_ Dolls, why don’t you go back up and climb your tree?”

The man on the bench watches for a reaction. He sees the boy look down at his feet, clenching his hands, and seemingly taking a big breath.

He looks back up.

“My mama said I should never let ignorant people upset me. You’re just ignorant.”

“What did you call me?! I’m gonna _kick_ your ass!”

The red-faced boy gestures to the other children in the circle, who move in and grab the smaller boy. One of them twists his arm up behind his back, and though his face contorts in pain, he doesn’t cry out, just struggles and twists. Eventually he gives up, and just lets his body fall slack.

The other boys laugh, in that terrible guilty gleeful hyena laugh that only small boys or the truly twisted can laugh. But then the laughter stops, as the kid takes advantage of the brief weakness of their laughter, wriggles and turns and flails away from the many hands gripping him. He darts underneath the ringleader’s arm, waits for him to turn, and then lashes out with an unrefined but incredibly effective uppercut.

The bully teeters for a second, and then crashes to the ground. The child Dolls sprints off, the other boys in pursuit, but vainly, as he pumps his thin arms and legs furiously, pulling away from the chasing pack.

The man on the bench makes a final note on his pad, then pulls out a black box the length and very nearly the weight of a brick. He pulls out an aerial, dials in a number on the large clunky buttons on the inside, and speaks.

“We’ve found him.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. He’s strong, brave, amazingly agile, fast. He’s got tolerance to pain, intelligence, and is incredibly level-headed for his age. And, well, you’ve seen his DNA tests. He’s the one, I’m telling you.”

“Excellent. Excellent work, Frank. And the extraction?”

“Oh, we’ll do it the standard way. Fake car accident, body too disfigured to identify, the usual.”

“Okay. And the parents?”

“Well, they’ll miss him I’m sure.” The scientist pauses, looks contemplatively off in the distance the boy had run. “I feel sorry for them, you know.”

“The parents? Well, sure. Losing a child…”

“No, not that.” The scientist frowns, irritated. “That we can’t tell them what their sacrifice is really for. If only they knew that their son might one day help save not just the USA, but maybe humankind...”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line.

“Sure Frank. Well, you just bring him in. Over.”

“Over and out.”

 

* * *

 

Waverly walks through the front door of Pussy Willows, laughing with Wynonna, and almost feeling good about being dragged away from their morning for whatever this was. It might be something about Bulshar, or the curse, right?

And then she walks into the main room of the club. And nearly throws up.

There’s bodies. Everywhere. Mutilated, bloody, seemingly covering the floor.

Oh god. Oh god.

“Even for Purgatory this is bad.”

Nicole starts to tell them about the cult of Bulshar, and Waverly’s listening, but a part of her is listening more to the way Nicole is speaking than the words. She seems dazed, distant. And she’s just wandering about aimlessly in the crime scene, walking through puddles of blood, no method, no police protocol. She’d normally be yelling at Wynonna to stay back from the crime scene, arranging for it to be properly taped off and secured, shepherding Waverly away from the horror. Like Waverly wasn’t born to horror, like this wasn’t just the latest sick episode in a lifetime of fear.

Instead, she’s just looking blankly around at body after body, whilst Waverly bats ideas and challenges back and forth with her sister.

“No, no, I’m saying that Bushar has been in the ground for 130 years. He couldn’t have spearheaded a killing cult.”

“Maybe he had admirers.” Nicole sounds queasy.

“Or bitches in black to do his bidding?”

Wynonna heads off towards the restroom corridor, and Waverly half registers that, but her attention is more fully taken by the the body in front of her. It’s stomach-turning, a torso carved with deep jagged slashes, a pattern of blood and torn flesh echoing that of the bodies on the floor beneath.

“My god, have you seen this?”

She can’t tear her horrified eyes away, until she hears an intake of breath, and turns to see Nicole transfixed, wide eyed, and chest heaving.

“Nicole? Hey, shh, it’s okay. Hey, come on, let’s go get you some water.”

 

* * *

 

_Wyld Wood Festival of Music and Wycca, 1998_

 

Nicole plays secret agent in the woods.

Nicole plays secret agent a lot. Her mommy and daddy are really funny sometimes, like they don’t know her at all. Maybe they’re playing secret agent too? It makes her feel better when they’re like that to play along. Like when she lets them call her Nicky, though they know that she hates it. Maybe it’s her secret agent name? Or maybe they’re letting her keep her proper name, Nicole, for when she goes on her missions?

She holds her fingers up in a gun shape, and hides behind a tree. She can still hear the beat of the music in the woods, but she’s too good a secret agent to let the music be an excuse for being heard. She quietly moves to another tree, creeping silent as a mouse, silent like when they’re snoring on the sofa and she wants a water and she pulls the stool to the sink and she’s really really careful not to let it scrape the floor and wake them...

There’s shouts back at the campsite. They’ve been shouting all day, the adults. She doesn’t know what they get so excited about. Just big stupid music. She doesn’t shout. She’s a big girl now. And anyway, the music’s stopped now, why are they still shouting?

The shouts sound bad now. They sound a bit like screams.

Then it goes really really quiet. Except for one man’s voice, calling out a funny sounding name over and over again.

She doesn’t like it. It sounds weird.

I’m a secret agent. I don’t get scared. I bet Aunty Jill and Uncle Terry have just got them to play the secret agent game, too.

She nods her head, determined. If this is a game, how does she win?

It’s an escape game, she decides. She moves from tree to tree, holding her finger guns out in front of her. Quiet, quiet, don’t get caught. She’ll hide out here in the woods, and then they’ll all look for her, and they’ll never ever find her cos she’ll hide so good. And when she comes out again they’ll be so relieved, and so proud of her.

She doesn’t think about all the times she’s hid away for hours and hours, and mummy hasn’t looked, and daddy didn’t look pleased, didn’t look like he even noticed when she finally comes out from under the coats and jackets in the cupboard.

 

* * *

 

Nicole stands in the bathroom stall at Pussy Willows, eyes closed, palms sweaty, heart racing, and hyperventilating for Canada.

She's been first responder on enough scenes to recognise a shock-induced panic attack when she sees one. But she's never been on this end of one before, and has a newfound respect for them.

It feels a little like dying. Despite her heaving breaths it's like she can't get enough oxygen into her lungs. She wants to hide away in the stall forever, and at the same time can feel the walls looming and pressing in on her, and has the conflicting urge to just run, get away, _run_.

And she just can't deal with Waverly right now. She has a flash of irritation as she hears her girlfriend outside, bemoaning the fact that Nicole's not there for her for once. But it's instantly replaced by guilt; _she doesn't know, you haven't told her, how can she be expected to know why you’re reacting like this_?

There's a knock on the stall door, and Waverly's voice comes through, softer now.

“Nicole? Are you okay in there?”

Waverly sees the lock slide from red to green, and carefully pushes opens the door.

_Oh, crap_. Nicole's face is wan, her eyes squeezed shut, and her chest is heaving uncontrollably. Waverly takes and gently unfolds her clenched hands; they're clammy to the touch. Nicole squeezes Waverly's hands, but otherwise doesn't acknowledge her presence.

“Nicole? Baby? I'm here, it's okay sweetie, you're okay.”

No good. Nicole struggles to swallow, then goes back to her thin gasping breaths. She looks like she's about to pass out.

Waverly looks up at her worriedly for a second. Then remembers something; when she was little, and having nightmares, her uncle Curtis would scoop her into his lap, and she'd press her head against his chest, and be comforted by the steady sound of his heart beat.

She takes one of Nicole's hands, and lays it flat above her left breast. Covers it with both of hers, and holds it there tight.

“Can you feel my heart, Nicole?”

Nicole hesitates, then nods.

“Open your eyes, baby.”

Nicole takes a moment, but then does, and Waverly can feel her own panic rise for a second at the fear and pain she can see there.

_No, hold it together, Earp. She's always there for you, and now she needs you for once, okay?_

“Look at my breathing, Nicole. Can you see?”

Their hands are rising and falling on Waverly's chest, in time with her slow steady breaths. Nicole swallows again, and does what she’s told, and starts to focus and concentrate.

Long moments pass, with Waverly looking up in love and worry at Nicole, who is staring down at their hands like her life depends on it.

"You're okay Nicole. You're okay. Just breath, sweetie, just watch me and breath.”

Long, quiet, moments, with just the sound of Nicole's shallow racing breaths gradually slowing, and Waverly murmuring soothing sounds and words. Until eventually they’re breathing in tandem, Nicole only realising that she’s back to normal when she sees Waverly duck her head to catch her eye, and smile 

“That’s better. You okay?”

Nicole takes one last, deep, breath, and swallows. 

“Yeah. Thanks, Wave. I was kinda freaking out.”

Waverly allows their linked hands to fall down from her chest, but doesn't let go. She studies them for an uncertain second, and then looks back up at Nicole and asks, in a quiet voice. “Are you gonna tell me what's going on, Nicole? I know it's really bad out there, but I've never seen you like this.”

Nicole hesitates.

“Yeah. I'll explain. But.” She exhales, shakes her head. “I've got to go and be a cop now, Waves.”

Waverly looks carefully at her, and then nods, as if she's given her permission.

“Okay. First, though.”

She leans up on tiptoes, and softly kisses Nicole.

 

* * *

 

Across town Doc has just unlocked and opened the door to Shorty's. He's got a clean checked shirt on, only a few days’ stubble, and the bar is fully stocked and gleaming. He idly practices his draw, spinning and reholstering his gun and then doing it all over again, as he wanders back from the doors to sit behind the bar to wait for his first customers.

So it is that his gun is already in his hand when two men walk in, and immediately set all his nerves a-jangling.

They don't look like they're here to drink. One is in a hoodie and big jeans, the other an expensive suit; incongruous enough walking in together, doubly so in Purgatory’s wasteland of flannel and denim. Triply so given that Doc can clearly see both are packing; and, rather than fixing their eyes on the beer taps like every good high noon drunk should do, they're casting practiced appraising glances around the bar.

Doc lays his gun on its side on the bar, but still in his grip, pointing just shy of the left of the two.

“Good day gentlemen. And what can I be getting you?”

If Doc has clocked them, they realise they have been clocked just as fast. Professional scoundrels, all three of them.

Hoodie speaks. Gets straight to the point. “We heard that a certain Wynonna Earp might visit this bar.”

“She might. I can’t deny you that.”

“And might she be visiting now?”

Doc looks scornfully at the suit.

“Regretfully I must say, she is not.”

The two men look at each other. Then without a signal, both make a quick move, and suddenly there are two guns pointing straight back at Doc.

Hoodie grins, a horrible facsimile of a buddy look.

“C’mon now John Henry, we all know what you two have been up to. Your daughter - “

The high pitched whine and ricochet of two shots let off in quick succession is followed by the roar and gasp of the two men, as the suit squeezes his right hand between his legs, cursing up a storm, whilst hoodie hops from foot to foot, shaking his high in the air, both of their guns shot clean out of their grips.

“If you two _gentlemen_ won’t be purchasing any liquor from this establishment I am sorry to say I must ask you to leave.”

Doc is calm as the day is long, unmoving from his previous pose, the only clue to his action a wisp of smoke from the barrel of his gun, and a look of veiled anger in his eyes.

Both glare, and then hoody starts to move towards his piece on the floor, but flinches back at a clearing of Doc’s throat.

“You’ll leave as you are, gentlemen. Or you’ll not be leaving at all.”

 

* * *

 

_A US Army facility, classified location, 1999_

 

Xavier Dolls slows to a jog on the treadmill, and then stops completely, heartbeat only slightly elevated, and a warm feeling of triumph washing through him.

They were pushing him today, he knows, but he never once felt out of his comfort zone. He peels the monitor pads off his bare chest, grinning cockily at the male nurse who takes them, and goes to sit on the recovery chair, waiting for his injections.

The man in the white coat comes and reads the print-out from the treadmill, and then out and out beams at him.

“Excellent. _Excellent_.”

“Yeah? I felt good.”

“You are better than good. Okay, sleeve up now, it’s time for your vitamins.”

Dolls obediently bares his arm for the injection, but when it’s done, look levelly in the doctor’s eye.

“You know we've discussed how I’ve been feeling...different. Lately. Are these vitamins? Really?”

He knows, from the few books and TV shows the facility allows him, that in youthhood, a man starts to change. So the crack and drop in his voice he had expected, the hair under his arms wasn’t a surprise, hell, even the worrying strength of his teen desires didn’t seem out of the normal from what he understood.

But he’d never read about eyes turning reptilian, or a sore throat in the morning from coughing out flames in the night.

The doctor sits back. Considers for a long second.

“They really are mostly vitamins, Xavier. But you’re right. That’s not all they are.”

“I’m nearly a man, now, Frank. Tell me?”

There is a long, long silence. The doctor, the scientist, puts down his clipboard, and takes off his glasses.

“Have you any idea how special you are? Do you know how many other times we've tried? You’re the first who - you’re a very special young man, Xavier.”

 

* * *

 

“I swear, Officer, I saw her sniffing around Pussy Willows this morning. I knew she was back, but I had no idea at _all_ she was capable of _that_. But it was her, I swear.”

Nicole stands behind the duty desk, staring skeptically at the two men in front of her, practically vibrating with nervous energy, insisting that they bring one Ms Wynonna Earp in for questioning for mass murder at the strip club. Saying they saw her there at an hour that Nicole knew full well was impossible, due to herself being wrapped around the sister of the accused at the time, listening to the shouts of Wynonna’s training float up from the barn.

“Can you say again please exactly what time you believe you saw her?”

“7.15, Officer Miss. It was 7.15 and she was coming out from the club with blood on her hands. We both saw it clear as daylight.”

Nicole nods, makes a note on her pad.

“Okay. Thank you. I think it’s best I take a formal statement from you both then.”

“What? Why?” argues the second man, seeming nervous. “Can’t you just bring her in? She’s trouble, the whole town knows that.”

“Weell…” Nicole tilts her head, looks contemplative. “You’re not all wrong on that count. But this is a serious accusation you're making. Would you mind following me through to the interview rooms?”

The men look at each other, a little panicked.

“No...no, it’s alright. Let us, uh.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. Let us, uh, just check something. We’ll be back in in a second.”

The two men leave, plucking at each other’s sleeve, whilst Nicole looks after them, seriously confused.

 

* * *

  
_Ghost River Triangle, 1998_

 

Juan Carlo stands, cap in hand, shaking his head in grief at the scene of devastation laid out in front of him.

There are bodies and blood everywhere. The wild beauty of the wood suddenly transformed into a lost and evil place; death being a part of nature for sure, but never death on this scale, never with this horrific brutal senselessness.

_I should’ve done something_ , he tells himself. _I should've stopped this._

No. He couldn’t. He’s tried, before, and nothing he does ever sticks. It unravels each time, or comes back, ten times worse.

_Why am I cursed like this? What is the point of putting me on earth like this, if nothing I ever do can make a difference?_

He walks away from the scene, feeling utterly lost. _Our Father_ , he starts. _Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy…_

Even in his head he trails off. What sort of kingdom come is this?

He walks down the slope, hearing the crash of someone beating through the brush somewhere behind him to his left. He knows the perpetrator is around here somewhere, but doesn’t fear for himself. That’s not his deal in life.

_If only I could’ve helped. If only…_

He stumbles over a tree stump, a tree stump which then uncurls, and stands, and glares.

“Ow!”

Juan Carlo shakes his head, and just stares. At the tiny red haired girl who is standing, hands clenched in tiny balls of fear or anger; incongruously alone in the woods and still with some of the leaves she'd covered herself with clinging to her hair and thin t-shirt. She somehow seemed more annoyed at his accidental unveiling of her hiding place, than the dire situation she was seemingly in.

“I was _winning_ ”, she says.

Juan Carlo can still hear the crashing behind them. He’s looking for something, Juan Carlo realises in a rush. Someone?

“That you were. Good job. What’s your name, little girl?”

She stares at him, not sure she can trust him. But then seems to make up her mind.

“Special Agent Nicole Haught.”

Juan Carlo chuckles, despite the situation.

“Well, Special Agent, can I give you some advice?”

The small girl puts her fists on her hips. She looks terrified too, but beyond the almost comic bravado of the posture, he can see a genuine bravery that he's seen grown men lack. She nods, like she’s the one doing him a favour.

He hesitates, just for a second. This isn’t intervening. She’s saved herself. He’s just guiding her. He's allowed to _guide_. And if he knows the killer is somewhere behind them, he also can hear sirens in the distance, and knows police will start their search by closing off the river path.

“There’s some other special agents coming up the river, I hear. You go down, down by the canoes - you know where the canoes are? Good. You go down there, and wait, and I’ll bet you anything your agent friends will pick you up in no time at all.”

The girl nods again. Goes to set off, then remembers herself. Turns, and politely says.

“Thank you, sir.”

 

* * *

 

Nicole taps on the Sheriff’s open door by way of announcing her presence.

Nedley is sat at his desk, staring confusedly at the telephone receiver he still holds in his hand.

“Nicole. That was the Mayor’s Office.”

“Calling about the killings, sir?”

Nedley nods, fully hangs up the phone. Says, in a deadpan tone of voice. “He said he’s delighted that we’ve picked up Wynonna Earp for the crime, that it’s long overdue she be charged for something like this, and that he will be over with his security men to escort her into federal custody shortly.”

Nicole’s eyebrows sky-rocket.

“ _Do_ we have Wynonna Earp in custody for the crime?”

"Not yet, sir.” Nicole matches the Sheriff’s deadpan tone of voice herself. “But according to the two men who I’ve never seen before in this town but apparently know Wynonna really well, that’s exactly what we should be doing. They both place her at the scene of the crime at 7.15, with blood on her hands, sir.”

Nedley’s bushy eyebrows raise, and he has the decency to look genuinely surprised.

“Except, she couldn’t be, because she was on the homestead at 7.15. I can, ah, I can personally vouch for that.”

They look at each other a second, both their instincts firing. Nedley’s grizzled stubble and thinning hair is a contrast to Nicole’s fresh faced youth; his old style and properly-worn uniform clashes with Nicole’s newer attire, open necked and rolled sleeved. But both are wearing identical expressions of pissed-off Purgatory cop: the look of two officers just wanting to get through their day job for once without having to first sift the differences between a genuine lead and the oogly boogly crew at work.

“There’s something not - ”

“This doesn’t sound - ”

They both start talking at the same time, and then hearing the decisiveness in each other’s tone, know they’ve reached the same conclusion, and neither bother finishing their sentences.

“I might just take a little ride out to the Mayor’s offices, Nicole.”

Nicole nods. “I think I’d better check out the Homestead, sir. Follow up on that report.”

They both know it’s an excuse to check on Waverly’s safety, but Nedley doesn’t argue.

“Good plan. Call in when you get there.”

  
Across town, the mayor hangs up his own phone, his hand shaking.

He tries to keep the shaking to a minimum, not wanting to move a muscle really, due to the unfortunate fact of having a machete pressed so tight to his throat he can feel the blade starting to bite.

The big man sitting relaxedly opposite him smiles a broad smile, jewels glinting in his teeth, and considers the polaroid picture he’s holding of a terrified woman, tied to a chair.

"Good job. Your wife is beautiful, man. It would be so bad if anything happened to her.”

The jibbering madman holding the blade to the mayor laughs, a high-pitched, manic laugh.

 

* * *

 

“Waves? Waverly?” Nicole can hear the note of panic in her own voice as she tries her level best not to break into a run in the short distance from her cruiser to the homestead steps.

She’s nearly at the porch when the door opens, and Waverly’s stood there, happy to see her but with a puzzled look on her face.

“Sweetie? What’s going - oof!”

Waverly’s greeting is cut off by Nicole barrelling into her at full speed, and enveloping her in an almost smothering hug. Waverly frees an arm, and pats her girlfriend confusedly on the back.

“Nicole? Is everything alright?”

Nicole breaks contact, and stands back, looking almost embarrassed. Smooths and tucks in her uniform shirt, and clears her throat.

“Sorry. Odd report came in, and I was worried.”

Waverly lifts her head in a single, pronounced nod. “Okay. Do you want to come in, and tell me about it?”

 

Twenty minutes later and they’re both sat with cups of tea, Nicole taking a formal statement on Wynonna’s alibi for the morning just for the sake of process, completely redundant as it was being backed up by that of an officer of the law.

“And where is she now?”

Waverly looks pointedly at Nicole’s notepad. Nicole smiles, closes it.

“That’s just me asking.”

“I don’t know. She said she had to go out, run an errand. Who knows, Nicole. She and Dolls have been getting close again lately, maybe she’s gone to see him but doesn’t want to say so?” Waverly shrugs, takes a sip of her drink. “So have you heard back from Nedley?”

“Yeah. He said that all looked okay by the time he got there, but that the mayor looked seriously spooked out. He apparently said the call was all some sort of mix up, but Nedley’s not buying it.”

“Okay. Well, this is Purgatory Nicole. Stranger things happen here before breakfast.” Waverly winces when she realises what she’s said.

“Yeah. Exactly. And this feels like part of that, Waves. Don’t ask me to explain why I’m saying that, it just feels all kinds of wrong.”

Waverly looks levelly at her girlfriend. Trust in others isn’t something that comes super easily to her, but she’s beginning to trust her lover’s instincts on things like this. She’s about to say as much, when all of a sudden, an ear-splitting siren rings out.

Waverly sighs dramatically at the same time as Nicole springs to her feet, fumbling for her service weapon and edging towards a window.

“ _Stupid_ frickin’ knob-gobbling Earp-worrying _shit_ -tickets…” grumbles Waverly under her breath as she easily swings her shotgun from it’s hidden mount under the kitchen table and joins Nicole at the window. There’s two men standing at the perimeter of the property in frozen awkward poses, guns in hand and menacing of face, but hearing the siren ring out both are looking more like two little boys caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Which, metaphorically, they have.

Nicole keeps as much of herself to one side of the window as possible whilst pushing up the sash just high enough for Waverly to put her gun through. And then her eyes nearly pop out of her head when Waverly throws caution to the wind and puts her head towards the gap, rather than the gun. 

“This is private property, assholes!”

“Waverly!”

Nicole pulls her almost violently down, below the counter, and not a second too soon as a shot rings out and the window above their head explodes into shards of glass.

“Sorry. But honestly. Can’t I have one _frickin’_ conversation with my girlfriend without someone interrupting?”

“Eh. Makes a change from it being your sister at least.”

The siren is still screaming, and another shot shatters what’s left of the window, and they’re both crouched below the counter of the kitchen, in mortal danger yet again, and so they really shouldn’t both be giggling at this, laughing and relishing the adrenaline rush of it all.

“Okay? My count?”

Waverly lifts her gun to her shoulder, and nods.

“One, two...three!”

They rise in unison, both taking a corner of what’s left of the window and firing almost instantly at the approaching men. Neither shot hits their target, but that’s okay because apparently the surprise of it is enough to have the attackers jumping and scrambling back to cover, out in the open as they were, apparently not expecting any sort of fight-back at all.

“Yeah, you better run!” yells Nicole, letting off another round deliberately over the heads of the retreating men. She can’t bring herself to shoot another person in the back, even if she knows there’s a really good chance that they’re not a person at all.

She spares a look at Waverly, who is grimly looking down the sights of her shotgun at the men disappearing over the rise at the edge of the property. Then walks over to the alarm control box by the fridge, and fiddles with the setting, until the siren falls quiet; the sudden silence oppressively loud in it’s own way.

“Well. That was fun. What were you saying about things feeling wrong today, Nicole?”

The recklessness of the adrenaline was already fading away, leaving in its place an all too familiar sick feeling of another close shave endured; the fear of getting hurt nothing to compare to the all-out terror that the other might be.

Nicole holsters her weapon, closes the popper securely shut. Walks over to her love, who is still holding her shotgun with rigid hands. Places a careful hand on her upper.

“Waves.”

Waverly takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and finally loosens the grip on her gun. She blows the breath out, lays down the shotgun on the counter, and turns and sinks bonelessly into Nicole’s waiting arms.

“You okay, Waverly?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Yeah.”

Neither says anything more for a long time. They just hold each other, breathe each other in, and thank their own personal gods for the weeks of training, for Dolls and Jeremy’s early warning intruder alarm system, and that this time at least, neither of their brave or stupid impetuosity got the other one killed.

 

* * *

 

_An abandoned church, Ghost River Triangle, 1998_

 

A young man in black military uniform stands next to a dark alter, watching the flames of the candles he’s lit on it flicker and surge.

“Master. I have done your bidding. A bloody massacre, to commemorate your glorious victories.”

The candles surge, and he’s sure that just for a fraction of a second he sees eyes in the flames. He knows he can't lie. The consequences of being found out for that would be far worse.

“But. My Lord.”

He turns his beret round and round in his hand, terrified of what he had to say, and too terrified not to say it.

“There was...an error. There was a survivor. A child.”

The flames flicker, and grow, until they're a roar of fire each, the candle wax splitting and running at the sudden inferno of it.

“No. No, I'm sorry, she escaped. The police are protecting her, and I couldn't follow without risking - aaaagh!”

The man screams as a gash opens up, from his brow and down his face, as if some invisible blade has slashed at him. With his hands to his face, blood pouring out of the wound and over his fingers, he falls to his knees.

“I'm sorry. Please forgive me master, it won't happen again. I will fix it master, I will bring her back, and then when you rise, I will deliver her to you. She will regret defying you.”

The flames fall back to a normal burn, but still flicker, and wave. The man clutches at his face, vowing revenge.

“I will watch her, and she shall return.”

 

* * *

 

Michelle Earp - Michelle _Gibson_ , thank you very much, I am not carrying that man’s name like I used to hafta carry his sorry drunken ass to bed every night - Michelle _Gibson_ walks into the visiting room.

That’s peculiar, she thinks. Morton’s got a visitor. Don’t look like they’re having a very entertaining time of it, she thinks; seeing Morton in her habitual wordless back and forth rock of a stressful situation.

Huh. And Fife, too? She’s been practically catatonic these days, how’d she even sign the visitor form?

“Mama?”

_Stranger still that_ _you’ve_ _got a visitor, Michelle. Not your beautiful, perfect, can’t put a foot wrong little girl though, is it? She’s never come out to see her poor lonely mother once, has she? Can’t be bothered to interrupt her perfect little life, can she? It’s the bad seed who keeps coming back. The one you screwed up, the one you_ _abandoned_ _._

“Shut. Up!” Michelle shouts it at the demon voice in her head, but half the visitors in the room flinch.

Wynonna doesn’t. She almost imperceptably shakes her head, but holds her mother’s gaze steadily, as Michelle lowers herself into the seat opposite her daughter.

“Look, I know you told me not to come back here, but...we need to talk. About him. So, start talking, Mama.”

 

Shut up, Michelle says again, this time in her head. I can’t concentrate with you jabbering on like that. She still can’t make out anything her daughter is saying, until she hears a word that cuts through the confusion.

“...The Cult of Bulshar.”

And with that the voice in her head falls silent, and Michelle Gibson looks straight into Wynonna’s eyes.

She looks tired, her mother thinks. But she’s grown to be beautiful. How did I make something so beautiful? And when did I mess it up so badly?

She purses her lips. “Your father knew him by a different name. Sheriff Clootie, who started it all. Started the demons who chase you. But, Wynonna, there are demons, and then there are demons...”

“And then,” says a loud voice she doesn’t know. Her head whips round to see Fife’s visitor ignoring the poor motionless wretch of a woman he was supposedly visiting, to stand, and walk straight over to her; then she spins the other way as she hears another voice finish, “There is our lord and master, _Bulshar_.”

Morton’s visitor is bearing down on Wynonna, and they both reach their target at the same time, grabbing one of each of them from behind bodily and pulling them up and out of the chairs. The visitor’s room is pandemonium, the inmates variously gibbering wrecks or joyfully cheering the men on, blocking the panicking guards who are trying to reach the scene in the middle of the room, whilst visitors cower in the corners, having overturned half the tables in their haste to get away.

Michelle is struggling in the grasp of her assailant, a thick arm pressing up against her throat making it hard to breathe. She sees the first sign of dark spots form in front of her eyes, but manages to lock eyes with her daughter, and gesture with her eyebrows, and see a returning nod from Wynonna, who is trapped with both arms pinned to her side by her own attacker.

Michelle nods a swift count of one, two, three, then suddenly slackens her struggle, feels the man behind her almost topple forwards with her at the sudden absence of resistance, and then she uses his second’s disorientation to brace herself against his grip, lifting both legs full off the floor, seeing with satisfaction her daughter do the same, and both plant their feet either side of the visitor table between them, and _shove_.

The co-ordinated push sends both their attackers falling backwards, and both use the moment of impact to wriggle free, and turn, and with both men still lying winded on the floor, and with the full force of a woman scorned, jailed, cursed, you name it the Earp women have got it, both slam their right foot as hard as they possibly can into their respective attacker’s groins.

The wounded animal yelling of both the men sets the more excitable of the inmates off again, and in the confusion of the guards trying to calm them, the two men drag and limp themselves out the door, leaving Wynonna and Michelle stood in the centre of the wrecked visitor room, both with hands on hips, panting, sweating, looking at each other.

And grinning like-mother, like-daughter, shit-eating grins.

 

* * *

 

Black badge offices, and Wynonna shovels down her chinese takeway, looking around the room at her friends, her family, in the gathering gloom of the evening.

Mouth half full, she gestures with her chopsticks. “Let’s go round again?”

 

~

 

The warehouse, and the scar faced man looks down at ten shamefaced, enraged, and in some cases, still wincing men.

“You all failed? _All_ of you?”

 

~

 

Doc takes a bite of a spring roll impaled on his knife. “Two armed men looking for you at Shorty’s. Sent ‘em away with something to think about.”

 

~

 

“She’s got Doc Holliday’s protection”, said the man in the hoody. 

“And he’s sober, and not lost any of his skill.” said the suited man who was with him. “ _Despite_ what your report said.”

 

~

 

Wynonna looks at Nicole, who is sitting as close to Waverly as their chairs will physically go, body slightly behind and turned towards her sister in a subconsciously protective pose.

“Two strangers looking to apparently frame you for the killings, and a shaken up mayor calling in asking to pick you up with his security guards." says Nicole in her Officer Haught voice. Then goes on, in more of a Nicole grumble, "Like there’s not enough paperwork and procedure for that sort of thing already.”

 

~

 

“She’s got _friends_.” whines one of the nervous ones who had visited the police station. “You said the police hated her?”

 

~

 

Wynonna nods, and looks at her sister, who is stirring peanut butter into her soup with one hand, the other resting on Nicole’s thigh, fingers idly stroking and caressing in a way that might be deemed a fraction inappropriate for company, if she was in any way aware she was actually doing it.

“We’ve used up the last of that plywood we were using for boarding up windows.” says Waverly, mildly.

 Wynonna raises a single eyebrow. Her sister shrugs.

“Two, didn’t get a close look, armed, good shots, but ran like big sissies at the first sign of a fight back.”

 

~

 

“She’s got _family_.” says a bald-headed, thuggish one, still smarting from the unexpected challenge to what they thought would be an easy kill.

 

~

 

“And you, Wynonna?” Dolls asks, looking pointedly between her and Waverly. He’d picked Wynonna up after the ruckus at the psychiatric wing of the prison, and they'd had a long talk on the way back about her keeping Mama Earp's whereabouts from Waverly. Wynonna had eventually relented and agreed to tell her, but hadn’t made any promises about when.

“Don’t _rush_ me.”

Waverly frowned. “Don’t rush what?”

Wynonna sighed. “I had my own little run-in. Two again.”

“What?!” said Waverly?

“Are you okay, Earp?” said Nicole, seriously.

Wynonna nods. “All hunky dory.” She picks up a bottle from the table, and empties the last of it over her noodles.

 

~

 

The scar-faced man shook his head, disgusted. “You know what this means?”

 

~

 

Wynonna stares contemplatively at the empty bottle in her hand. “You know what this means?”

 

~

 

The ten look up at him.

“This is _war_.”

 

~

 

“What is it, Wynonna?” asks Doc.

Everyone looks expectantly at Wynonna.

“Next time we order we need to ask them to bring a new bottle of soy sauce.”

She shovels a mouthful of noodles in her mouth, to see a sea of anti-climactic faces looking back at her.

“Oh” she mumbles through a full mouth. Chews, then swallows, then waves her chopsticks again. “And, this all means absolutely no fucking good, and I think we might be in _serious_ trouble.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo boy, this is hard!
> 
> Would be over the moon for any feedback. I know it's pretty plot heavy, that's deliberate, but let me know if you think the balance is too far out of whack and it needs a bit more of the character stuff. Or any thoughts you have, really!


	3. Episode 2: Fire and Fury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A truth, a crash, and Waverly is taken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Emily Andras,
> 
> I apologise. This chapter is pretty much a straight copy of your episode 3x02, which I mostly liked very much. Except...
> 
> Can I first say, I will always be in your debt for the creation of the character of Nicole Haught. 
> 
> This confident, kind, loyal, self-declared and completely unabashed lesbian means a ridiculous amount to me, even as fully grown homo with enough real-life lesbian experience now not to have to rely on fictional characters for my validation.
> 
> I can't even begin to imagine how much it would've meant if had she shown up on my tv back in the time and place where there was simply no such thing as lesbians, ergo, I couldn't be one. Can't imagine what a difference it would've made to my deeply closeted, desperately unhappy, trying to do the 'right' thing but failing miserably, teen self.
> 
> If she'd have turned up on my tv, all 9 years' rock climbing experience, graduated top of her class, next in line for Sheriff at the tender age of twenty-something (not to mention great in bed...) - and those are canon characteristics! That's not stuff us lesbian fic writers have added later; you out and out wrote that stuff in for us!
> 
> So, from the bottom of my heart, _thank you_.
> 
> But at the same time? Can I make one humble request? Show, don't tell, yeah?
> 
> Love,  
> Seda

The truck rumbled along the dark tarmac, snow on either side washing the world out to a beautiful if tired monochrome.

Waverly shivered in the passenger seat next to Wynonna, beating her hands together then blowing on them for warmth.

"And why exactly are we going the scenic route? You know I said I'd meet Nicole for lunch, at this rate - "

"Okay okay! I just thought it would be nice to have a little drive, you know. Sister to sister! Earp time! Do I need an excuse to spend time with my favourite sibling?"

Waverly raises an eyebrow.

"Alright. And, because, I need to tell you something."

_And I can't look you in the eye when I tell you it._

_And because, if you're in an enclosed cab travelling at Earp speed, you're just going to have to sit there and listen until we're done. And then I can drop you off with Nicole, who can, please god, help you through it._

_Who can bear the brunt of the aftermath, you mean?_ said another voice in her head _. Who can clear up after your mess, without hesitation or question, like she has been ever since she first walked into town and your little sister's life?_

Wynonna tightened her lips into a thin line, accustomed to, and for once not entirely in disagreement with her critical internal voice.

Waverly hasn't picked up on Wynonna's sombre mood, and idly speculates as she takes in the view.

"You're pregnant again."

"Pfft. Hell to the no."

"Youuu...colluded with Russia to steal an election."

"Nyet."

"Oo - you lost my limited-edition sparkle Ugg slippers?"

Wynonna had almost managed a smile at that.

"Check your feet."

God she loved her sister. So how on earth then could she even begin to explain what she'd done, and why? All she knew now was, whether Waverly would ever forgive her or not, she had to come clean. With Bulshar making his move, and their mother, touched though she was, seemingly in some way aware of his cult, Wynonna knew they needed every chance of help they could get. And if that meant they needed their crazy-ass mother, then it just did.

She sighed, pulled yesterday's visitor's pass from her pocket.

"It's about Mama." And handed the pass over to Waverly.

"What - what - what's this? Wynonna, why are you visiting someone in prison with Mama's name - wait. Wait."

Waverly was turning the pass over and over, the shaking of her hands betraying a knowledge that her conscious mind couldn't yet begin to accept.

_Here we go_ , thought Wynonna.

"Wynonna?"

Waverly's voice was a small, desperate plead as she looked at her sister's ashen, guilt-ridden face. A sickening feeling curdled at the pit of her stomach when she saw nothing there to refute the awful realisation: so that just as Wynonna finally turned her head to face her sister's reaction, Waverly span back to stare unseeing out the windshield.

She only had a second to endure the pure shock of betrayal before she saw a movement in the road ahead of them; and this time, her sister's name was a scream.

"Wynonna!"

 

 ~~~

 

_'Cause I gave you all I got to give, and no that ain't no way to live, I told that devil to take you back. I told that devil to take you back_.

 

 ~~~

 

Hazy light and hazy screams and smothering it all, a white hot dizzying pain.

Weird, thought Wynonna. The ground's in the air. What are those clouds doing down there?

She felt a scuffle at her waist and then a wrench, followed by a vague sensation that something terribly important was missing.

An insistent screaming managed to pierce the fog of pain for a moment.

Something, and someone.

"Wvrly...wh'r'you...b'byg'rl..."

But the screaming suddenly stopped, and without it she just couldn't keep her eyes open; and the pain pulled her back down, into inky forgetful blackness.

 

* * *

 

Bulshar stood above his lieutenant, who was grovelling on his knees on the floor. It was pathetic. _He_ was pathetic.

"I am - we are so sorry, Master."

"You've said sorry before."

"Yes Master. I know. Please - I will make it up to you. Your enemies will be punished and you will revel in their blood."

Bulshar said nothing, but waited until the scar-faced man found the courage to look up.

" _You_ will be punished. I will bathe in _your_ blood. One more chance. But this time I watch, and if you fail me _one more time_..."

"Yes, Master. Yessir - Master Sir - Master!" the military man stuttered, scrambling to his knees and away from the backroom.

Bulshar turned back to the bloody, broken body of the Mayor, bound and gagged and tied to a chair, hanging seemingly lifelessly from his bonds.

"He's already sealed his fate. But I do so enjoy watching them try. Now, where were we. Oh, yes, your great grandmother. She stood by, you know, as they took me away."

Bulshar raised his hand, and made a twisting motion, and the slumped man in front of him jerked and contorted and _screamed_.

 

* * *

 

"Wynonna. Wake up. Wake _up,_  Wynonna."

Ow. Mother _fucker_.

Wynonna woke to a constricting band of pain round her chest, a thick salty taste in the back of her throat, and what felt more like a swollen bruise than it did a face.

And for some reason, to Michelle Earp, née Gibson, sitting cross legged and upside-down on the snow outside the truck. Berating her.

"You are hangin' by only your seatbelt and God's good grace inside a truck liable at any moment to blow. Wake _up_ , and get _out_."

"Wha...?"

Wynonna's head clears enough to take in her mother's words, if not understand her presence. She looks around her, disoriented by being upside down, but then registers the mangled open door and empty seat to her right.

"Waverly. Where's Waverly?"

Her mother shrugs, gravely.

That does it. Wynonna struggles and frees herself from the mess of seatbelt and steering column, pulling herself through shattered glass out of the cab, swearing royally at the stabbing pains in her chest that each and every movement cause her.

She hauls herself to her feet, looks around blearily, and shouts her sister's name once more; but that effort combines with the pain and dizzyness to nearly pull her right back over again. She feels sick, her mouth is watering, and she has to bend, and hold onto the wreckage of the truck for support, and spit. It's a deep red against the white of the snow.

"Oh that's nice I'm sure," comes her mother's voice. For some reason, she's now perched, gracefully if improbably, on top of the truck, swinging one leg over the side. "And yellin' your sister's name is a waste of your good energy, Wynonna. What did I teach you? What are the rules in a survival situation? Say them - rule number one."

Wynonna scoops two handfuls of clean snow from the ground, and puts it to her face. The shock of the cold brings her to her senses a little, and as she pulls the melting slush of snow away and feels and sees some of the crusty blood from around her nose and mouth come with it, she feels a little better.

"Don't panic." She straightens slowly this time, holding onto the truck for support.

"Mm-hmm. Rule number two."

"Assess the situation, calmly." She looks around her. Steps back from the smoking truck, and sees the trail in the snow the opposite side of the truck, leading away. Is that blood?

"Well shit, Mama. Could you stay calm? My baby sister is nowhere to be seen, it looks like she's been dragged off somewhere, the truck is totalled, and I'm standing on the edge of a cliff in the middle of a fucking snowstorm, hallucinating my incarcerated mother. The situation is - "

Wynonna takes a breath, passes a hand down her face again, and continues under her breath, reluctant to admit she's talking out loud to what she can only assume is a symptom of shock.

"Is a shit sandwich."

She looks up hopefully, but her mother is still there; now stood across the truck with her arms crossed and an impatient, patient look that Wynonna remembers from the scrapes and misdemenours of her childhood.

"Rule number three? Take inventory?"

"Fuck. For chrissakes, Mama." She grumbles, but her hand goes to her belt, and finding nothing, spins around. "Where's Peacemaker?"

"Oh for god's sake you really are your father's daughter. You think that magic gun's going to save you out here?"

"It's kinda my thing, Mama - and what if it's a revenant that's got Waverly? _Shit_ sticks...where _is_ it?"

She's searching around the truck now, desperate to get going after Waverly, but equally desperate not to be unarmed and helpless when she finds her.

"I don't care if you're a figment of my goddamned imagination, can't you be useful and actually help me for once? You know, like mothers are supposed to?"

Michelle looks levelly at her wild, hurting daughter.

"Mothers outside of jail and in their right mind typically find that a little easier, darlin'."

Wynonna softens, just a fraction. And Michelle concedes too.

"I didn't exactly see. What with you snoozin' away when he took it. If only there was some sort of way of seeing where he might have gone, though, hey?"

Wynonna glares again, but then looks down, and right enough there's another trail in the snow from her side of the truck. Shaking her head, and finally feeling more like herself, she follows it, right up to the edge of the cliff.

Peering down, she sees on a ledge far below a glint of gunmetal.

"Oh whooptyfucking doo and call me Charlie, that is just... _fuck."_

Shaking her head, she pulls her phone out of her pocket and hits a contact as she starts on the only option she now has left; the scuffled trail of blood leading away from the truck.

Michelle looks skeptically at the phone. "What are you doing? You think anybody out there's wanting to pick up for an Earp?"

"They might, you know. Times have changed from your day, Mama. New rule number four - phone a friend."

 

* * *

 

Nicole is stood behind the duty desk at the station, shaking her head almost more in impressed disbelief than annoyance.

"I think this is a record, boys. A quarter to one and you're drunk enough for fighting already?"

Kyle York squints at her through a puffy closed up eye. "We're not drunk."

" 'n we weren't fighting." says Pete, voice muffled by a fat lip.

"Sure. Lonnie, what did the call-in say?" she says skeptically.

Lonnie starts to talk, but Nicole doesn't hear it, because her cell phone is going off in her pocket, and she can't help the flutter of panic that inspires.

They weren't supposed to carry their personal phones when they were on duty, but Nicole had made a deal with Waverly some time back that she would make an exception, if Waverly promised she only used it in an emergency. One or two cross words after 'emergency running out of whiskey' calls later, and Waverly had respected the rule; and the phone had lain silent in her pocket for months.

"Hold that one second - " she turns for some privacy as she gets out her phone, and then the panic that was starting to take hold abates as she sees it's just Wynonna.

"This better be good Wynonna, I've got a break-in on Main, a mountain of paperwork, plus the chuckle brothers here determined to keep me from - "

"Are you sitting down Haught?"

"What?"

"Sit _down_ , Nicole."

_'Nicole'_?

The panic rushes back, tenfold. "What is it, Wynonna?"

"Okay. Don't freak out. I kinda crashed the truck. With my sister in it."

Nicole wishes she had sat, but grabs onto the desk as the next best thing as her knees nearly give way. She can hear her own voice thin with fear. "Is she..."

"I think she's alright. I heard her before I passed out...but, I think she's been taken by someone, Haught. They wouldn't take her unless she was alright, though, right? And there's a trail in the snow, and I'm following it, but I could do with some back-up..."

Wynonna's voice faded out for a second as the unstructured panic gave way to a surge of adrenaline that Nicole recognised, welcomed. Fight or flight can be a useful thing for a cop...

Nicole had worried about the implications of her panic attack, and gone to find Dolls to speak to him about her fears in private. What if that was going to be how she always reacted from now on? What if it meant she couldn't do her job?

He'd reassured her, and said that it was more than likely her reaction was a one-off, and only because of the massacre, and her childhood experience. But if it happened again, there were things that she could do, exercises. He'd surprised her by telling her he himself had had therapy for something not dissimilar, and there were tricks and tips he could pass on. She'd thanked him, greatly reassured, but still carrying a nagging worry about it in the back of her mind.

Turns out, if it's Waverly in danger, the adrenaline surge does exactly what her job needs it to do.

"Okay. On it. First, are you okay, Wynonna?"

"Eh...might have busted a rib or two. And my face hurts like a mother..."

"Okay, you need to stay on the main roads, I'm sending an ambulance for you. Where are you?"

"Route 5, about half-way into town. But I'm not staying on the goddamned road, Nicole, are you insane? This is _Waverly_. If you had two broken legs you'd drag yourself after her."

Nicole inclines her head in wry acknowledgement, hides the phone under her chin as she shouts over to dispatch. "Sara? Get an ambulance up to Route 5." She sees the raised eyebrows of the dispatch officer, and holds her hand up in acknowledgement. "Send them half-way to the turnoff with 20, I'll call in more detail when I know it."

She's rounding the desk as she's talking, and grabs one confused York brother, gesturing to Lonnie to take the other. As they haul them off to the cells, both brothers drunkenly lurching from side to side, she juggles the phone in her other hand.

"I'm on my way. Please be careful, Earp. You're no good to her dead."

"So I keep being told." replies Wynonna, cryptically, and then hangs up.

"What you doing? You haven't even charged us!" complains Kyle.

Nicole is _not_ in the mood to be complained to.

"You've been brawling again. We said last time that if it happened _once_ more, you'd be in serious trouble. You better believe I'm charging you. But right now..." she shoves Kyle in the holding cell, and Lonnie manhandles Pete in after him. She slams the bars shut, and throws the keys to Lonnie.

"Give dumb and dumber here a complaint form each, I'll deal with that and them when I'm back!"

Next stop Nedley's office, and she doesn't even wait for him to look up.

"RTA up on route 5. Wynonna called it in. Sir, Waverly was in the accident, but she's gone - Wynonna thinks she might've been taken - "

" _Go_." Nedley doesn't wait to hear more but raises an index finger and orders her out.

Nicole manages a grateful half smile, one hand on the doorframe, nearly out the office already. "Get Jeremy to phone Doc, I'm picking him up from outside Shorty's in _one_  minute. And - I don't know what this is, yet - "

Nedley nods, getting it. "I'll get Dolls and Jeremy on it too, Nicole. Now, go."

So she does, grabbing her coat and tossing it on over her head as she leaves the station at a run. Outside to her patrol car, door open, key in, tires screeching and siren full blast, pulling away before she's even closed the door.

 

* * *

 

Waverly had fought a good fight when the hunter - revenant - _whatever_ \- had dragged her out of the smoking wreckage of the truck. Having seen the crash coming she'd somehow managed to brace herself, and apart from a good wrench of her fingers and one deep scrape on the side of her head somewhere in the chaos of twisting metal and shattering window, she had come out of the accident pretty much unscathed.

So she hadn't appreciated it when the huge, bear like figure she'd seen stepping out into the road up ahead had pulled open her door, and whilst she was still dizzy from the crash, pulled her bodily from the wreckage.

She _particularly_ hadn't appreciated his greedy hands feeling and squeezing her arms and legs, muttering to himself and _smelling_ her.

So she'd struggled, of course she had, and nearly got away at one point when she'd wriggled out of her coat and so from his hold. But a massive hand had reached out and just caught her, and dragged her to the floor, and though she'd screamed for her sister, and put her hands up to ward him off, she could see the size of the cosh, and the speed at which he was bringing it down towards her head...

She woken she doesn't know how much later groggy, dizzy, and for a second confused as to what the cold hard lines against her back and thighs were. She'd opened her eyes to find herself crammed inside a cage, and giving the door a good hard kick to make sure, sadly a firmly locked one.

"Great. Fantastic."

She sighed, and looked around. The room the cage was in was a dark, smoky wood cabin. It was crowded with pieces of fur,  arcane equipment she didn't recognise, and vicious looking metal bear traps that she did; animal bones and skulls crowded on practically every available surface, on the mantle, on tables, and some hanging on the walls. 

And it stank, a sweet rotten smell that turned her stomach, already queasy from the crash, and made her throbbing head spin even more. She looked around again, and saw a pile of...something in the corner that she really didn't want to look too closely at.

" _Crap_. Hello? Anybody there? Can anybody help?!"

She shouted at the top of her lungs, rattling the bars once more, more out of frustration than any hope.

"Or, you know, you can just come back and get this over with?! You know you're only the third worst thing to happen to me today?"

She sat back, and shook her head. It really came to something when you were glad for a nice life or death situation to worry about, by way of light relief from the horrible fear she had that Wynonna had been badly hurt in the accident.

Or, for that matter, the horrible fear that what she'd learnt before it could possibly be true.

She closed her eyes, and swallowing down too many emotions to process right now, she let her head fall back against the bars, and allowed herself to fall back to thinking about the one, the only, warmth she had left.

_Nicole. My love. Please notice we're late. Please don't be patient, just this one time._

 

* * *

 

Doc tightened his grip on the door handle as the patrol car took another corner at a speed that even the toughest gunslinger in the west deemed just a little bit reckless. There had been no automobiles in his day, and there was only so fast you could take a horse...

"Ah...Officer? I think we might be nearin', might you want to, ah, I mean, I might need you to go a little slower if I'm to see any trackin' signs?"

Nicole, sitting a little forward in her seat and driving with absolute focus, didn't respond, but the car slowed, just a fraction.

"Much obliged." Doc instinctively put a finger to the brim of his hat to sarcastically tip it, then, ashamed at his own behaviour given what Nicole must be going through, turned the gesture into pulling the brim lower over his eyes in an attempt to cut out some of the glare from the snow. He narrowed his eyes against the black and white world rushing past; then, at the same second he thought he saw something, heard an intake of breath from his left, then lurched forwards as Nicole brought the car to an almost out of control, screeching stop.

It didn't need Doc's advanced tracking skills to see the path that the truck had clearly followed, off the main road in front of them, down a steep incline that had turned it over, and left it resting on it's back close to the edge of the cliff.

For the first time since she'd got Wynonna's call, Nicole was sat stock still, staring out the window at the scene, breath starting to come quick.

Doc reached out and put a hand to her arm. "Nicole. It doesn't look too bad, just rolled, and there's no fire. That's a good sign."

The touch took her out of the moment and back into action, and they both left the car, sprinting and slipping and sliding down the snowy bank. Nicole fell to her hands and knees to look in the car, and took in the relative lack of blood with a surge of relief. She stood, and radio'd in their location and status, watching Doc already starting to scout out the trails leading up to and from the car.

She doesn't want to interfere with his work, but when she sees with a painful lurch of her heart a coat that she recognises discarded on the ground, she runs straight to it without thinking, and picks it up. And hugs it to her chest, and takes in the scent of Waverly's perfume and a hint of the scent of Waverly herself she very nearly, very very nearly, loses it completely.

The hundred fears she'd been somehow keeping at bay rush her all at once; but amongst all of them, she can only bring herself to put words to the simplest.

"She'll...she'll be cold."

Doc looks up from the ground he'd been studying, and tilts his head in sympathy and understanding.

"Come now, Nicole. There's two sets of good strong tracks, and Wynonna's are nearly fresh. We'll catch up to them in no time. You'll see."

 

* * *

 

Wynonna stumbles through the snow, the ghost of her mother lagging behind.

"Lord almighty Wynonna how long ago did you have that child? You should still be sitting with your feet up with that cowboy of yours running around after you, not practicing for the all-weather Purgatory marathon record."

"You do _not_ get to talk about my child." Wynonna retorts through clenched teeth.

"Alice _Michelle?_   _My_  granddaughter? And why shouldn't I, Wynonna? You know that you're my daughter, and you also know I ain't just talking biology, darlin'. You worried she might be yours too?"

Wynonna swipes angrily at her eyes as she continues her angry stomp through the woods, blindly following a path that is one part trail, one part instinct, and several parts just whatever the hell way will get her fastest away from her goddamned ghost of a mother.

"And _you_ don't get to make comments about my choice of baby-daddy. Great job you did with mine, Mama. Thanks for that. Waverly and Willa say thanks too."

A hallucination walking in the woods shouldn't make much of a noise in the first place, so the sudden quiet of one stopping certainly shouldn't make quite the impact it does.

"What!" Wynonna huffs as she turns, and sees her mother stood, stock still, watching her. "Truth hurt, does it, Mama?"

The two Earp women stand, and stare. Equal parts regret, pride, and a cornered, defiant anger.

"I'm sorry about your father, Wynonna. I truly am. But I never stopped loving you girls. I didn't expect you to understand that, before. But now that you've had your own..." The apparition puffs out a bitter laugh, shaking her head. "Wait until the first time your girl tells you she hates you. And wait to see how angry it makes you. And then how it makes you just love her ten times more."

Wynonna stands, eyes filling, and this time doesn't bother to wipe the tears away, but punctuates her words with a stabbing accusatory finger.

"Waverly is going to _hate_ me. I thought I was doing it for her...but it was _you_ who made me promise. What did I know, Mama, I was just a girl myself! And now she is _never_ going to forgive me."

She's openly crying now, no aesthetic contained tears for Wynonna, but the streaming eyes and nose and the hiccupping breaths of a raging grief.

"And I sent Alice away for the best! What else was I supposed to do? I didn't have anyone to help me decide, I didn't have Daddy to talk to about the curse, and I didn't have you to talk to about Alice, and I didn't have...fuck!"

Wynonna covers her face with one hand, takes a deep breath, and gets her voice down from the high desperate tone she didn't recognise in herself, back to her usual distant ironic drawl.

"It's not fair, Mama. On them or me."

A simple summary, after all.

"It sure ain't. But your sister is going to hate you all the way from heaven if we don't get a shift on. Come on, girl. We've got twenty years of wrongs to right, we're not going to get through them all today."

 

* * *

 

For the second time in a matter of hours, Waverly is being dragged backwards through the snow.

Being conscious, and having her hands and feet bound painfully tight with rough homemade rope is not improving the experience any.

"Get off of me! Get off - my sister will be looking for me! My friends will be looking for me!"

"Was it it's sister? She was sleeping, yes she was, and it's cooold, she will sleep forever."

"She'll wake up, and she'll send you right back down to - "

Waverly's been struggling, and manages to land a decent double footed kick to the bear-man. Who turns, looms suddenly over her, growling, his eyes burning red with malice.

"I knew it!" Waverly crows in triumph, as if the accuracy of her guess evens up their position, and as if she wasn't tied, and at the mercy of a 200 pound lunatic of a revenant butcher. "Just you wait til she gets here with Peacemaker, then you'll regret it!"

_Funny_ , thinks the analytical part of her that even now is still working away. _I'm saying that as a delaying tactic, but I really believe it. How is it that I still have faith in her?_

The revenant is back to snuffling and muttering to himself as he drags Waverly remorselessly to a wooden structure at the edge of the clearing.

"The gun is gone, don't worry, the gun is gone. Now. It's kind's flesh is sweet, yes, it's sweet. But it spoils too easily. It'll be better hung, and bled. Will it scream like a pig, I wonder? Will it sound as pretty?"

They reach the scaffold, and he lifts Waverly easily by the feet, and hangs her by their bindings from a protruding spur. Waverly thrashes, and bends, but he takes another rope from a pocket and lashes her hands to a ring in the ground too.

And the blood rushes to her head, and seemingly with it tears too, because now she's crying, properly crying, because upside-down though she is she's looking round the clearing and can see nothing but the revenant whetting his enormous butchering knife. And though she screaming at the top of her lungs, there's no-one there. No help coming, after all.

"Wynonna! You owe me this, today! Please!"

Nothing at all, but the fatal shloop, shloop, of knife on steel.

Waverly closes her eyes, and stops struggling, and has one last, awful thought.

_I never told her_.

In a voice quiet enough for the revenant not to hear, but she hopes loud enough for the universe to somehow convey, she whispers.

"I love you, Nicole. I loved you so, so much."

 

* * *

 

Wynonna is running through the snowy woods as fast as the burning pains in her chest will let her.

Her mother had disappeared to wherever she'd come from some time ago, after their confrontation; but she seems to have picked up another tail, because she can hear crashing and shouts of what sounds like her name getting closer - is that Doc? But she's not waiting to find out, because what she _can_ hear, clear as day and chilling to the bone, is her last living sister, Waverly Earp, screaming for help, and crying out her name. There's screams for attention, and then there's one of genuine fear, and then, finally, one that sounds like the end of hope.

If she'd thought hearing all that was bad, hearing the sudden silence that followed was worse.

"Waverly! I'm coming, hold on baby girl!"

She bursts into a clearing, to see Waverly hanging by her feet, and a huge fur-coated man bent to her, knife in hand.

"Stop!" she gasps out, the shout barely sounding from her oxygen starved lungs as she starts to close the final distance. The man straightens, and turns, and meets her eyes with his coals of burning red.

But then his gaze seems to slips off her to something behind, then there are two sharp cracks in quick succession; then a whir of wings as birds fly up from the forest all around them.

The revenant looks down in surprise at the dark red patches blossoming on his chest. And then topples forwards, face down and unmoving in the snow.

 

* * *

 

Wynonna and Nicole had reached Waverly at the exact same moment, Nicole's long strides having easily caught up with Wynonna's pained shuffling run. And they'd needed no words, Nicole with her extra height carefully lifting Waverly's bound legs off the top of the scaffold whilst Wynonna supported her body down to the ground.

Waverly was shaking, and was so pale, lips almost blue, and she was dazed and stuttering, "you came, I knew you'd come..."

Nicole and Wynonna had shared a look, and a flicker of understanding had passed between them. _It doesn't matter which one. The only thing that matters is she's safe._  

Wynonna and Doc had worked on the ropes at her hands and feet with the hunter and Doc's knives respectively, and then Nicole had helped her to her feet off the snow, chafing her frozen hands and looking at her with eyes still full of fear, but tempered now with her relief, and her love.

Waverly wanted to disappear into the comfort of that look, but knows there's one more order of business she needs to take care of before she can. And so she turns to her sister.

"Are you okay, Wynonna? You're hurt."

Wynonna stands, arms wrapped around herself, and an expression as hangdog as it was tender.

"Don't you like my new nose-job?"

Waverly shakes her head. Her sister's face is a black and blue and bloody mess.

"Not funny, Wy. I mean it. What can't I see?"

"Coupla busted ribs, I think. And I was out for a while, when you were taken. Are _you_  okay, Waves?"

Waverly returns her look, quiet. And turns away.

Nicole is stood, ready, and has already unzipped her heavy police jacket; and Waverly takes the single step and gratefully takes up takes the silent offer. She slides her arms under Nicole's coat, round her waist, and just sinks into her embrace. She feels Nicole wrap both her arms and as much of her coat around her as is possible, and she buries her head under Nicole's chin, and her legs almost give way at the pure beautiful relief of it.

Nicole is warm, and strong, and soft, and safe, and she's bent her head against Waverly's, murmuring into the top of her head, _I've got you Waves, you're okay, I've got you._  Waverly pulls Nicole's shirt out the back of her trousers, and places her frozen hands against Nicole's warm skin, and she feels no flinch, but Nicole's arms just tightening around her shoulders instead.

"I've got you. It's okay, you're okay. I've got you."

 

* * *

 

Bulshar stares down from a ridge.

"How touching."

The scar-faced man doesn't dare comment. He would choose now to attack. When they think they are safe, when their attention is at their lowest.

But he doesn't dare defy his master again. So all he says is,

"It's her. The survivor."

" _Good_. The other is coming too? Let us greet them all together, then."

 

* * *

 

On the trudging walk back to the road and civilization, and with her girlfriend now firmly and safely by her side, Nicole has very nearly gotten over her fear, drowned out as it is with irritation. And to what does she owe this great pleasure?

The goddamned, utterly frustrating, endlessly aggravating, _frickin'_  Earps.

She loved Waverly with the heat of a hundred suns, that was in no doubt. But by god being an Earp in-law was hard work.

First there had been the for one moment touching, but then rapidly irritating fight over whose coat Waverly would take. Of course her stubborn girlfriend had just stood there, shivering and shocked and pale to the point of passing out, point blank refusing to countenance depriving any of the others of their winter gear.

Until Doc had solved the problem by noticing the "absolute and astonishin' workmanship" of the revenant's furs, and to everyone's disgust, pulled the stinking blood-stained coat happily on his back; handing his own padded jacket off to Waverly in a way that at least brokered no argument.

Then there had been the debate about what to do with the hunter revenant; who had rather inconveniently re-animated every two minutes, and had to be put down again and again until they were nearly out of ammunition. In the end they had given him a dose of his own medicine, tying him up with all the fragments of rope they could salvage, and only just managing between all four of them to lift him and suspend him upside down from his own scaffold, to come back for later.

Then, and only then, did Wynonna drop the little bombshell that yes, she did know where Peacemaker was, but no it wasn't back in the truck, and yes it was halfway down a _frickin'_ cliff.

Of course, Nicole being Nicole, had then volunteered that she had spare climbing gear back in her cruiser, and that of course she'd go down after the gun...

Goddamned _Earps_.

 

* * *

 

"Dolls! Am I glad to see you! Will you please tell me you and Jeremy figured another way of getting Peacemaker up? If I have to see Little Miss Passive-Aggressive here roll her eyes at me one more time..."

"Dolls, please help me convince these two _idiots_ they need to get to hospital to be checked out, _stat_?"

"Deputy Marshall are you a sight for sore ears. Please would you say something that ain't just complainin'?"

"Hey, Dolls."

Dolls had been leaning casually against the upturned truck, waiting for them all. He replies to each in reverse order, starting by simply taking Waverly in a hug. Holding her, he nods to Doc, an amused and understanding twinkle in his eye, before moving his attention to Nicole, who is practically vibrating with thwarted protocol and concern.

"Hospital is the very next stop, Haught. I've phoned in our location and the ambulance is on its way. But I'm afraid Wynonna is right, with Bulshar active, securing Peacemaker is our tactical priority right now."

Wynonna smiles smugly at Nicole, but then the grin drops off her face as Doc goes on.

"And, sorry Wynonna, but I've looked at the location, and you're just going to have to work on your thank-yous. Nicole, this looks makeable to me and the easiest way to get it is to climb - but I'll take your assessment."

Nicole is peering over the edge already, and nods. "I agree. No problem at all, I'll be down and up before you can say redheads do it better."

She winks at Waverly who, manages a fond roll of her eyes, and then for what feels like the first time that day, a genuine warm smile.

And with that, some of the tension of the group eases. Doc rolls a cigarette with intent concentration, trying not entirely successfully to hide the heebie jeebies he feels from being this close to the edge of the cliff. Nicole goes off to get her harness and ropes, and then comes back, checking them over meticulously. Waverly watches her prepare for the climb with an all-too familiar emotional cocktail of worry and ever-so-slightly-turned-on pride, whilst continuing to ignore her sister; who for her part pretends like she doesn't notice that and falls back on revenant business talk with Dolls. 

So each one of them is too preoccupied to notice the two figures watching them from above.

 

* * *

 

Bulshar waits. And assesses. The survivor is stupidly trusting her life to just a rope; that of course will be easily cut. Not the up close and personal vengeance he would have wished for her; but it is a long fall, and so it will be a terrifying and bloody end. It will do.

The girls...what a disappointment. Distracted, injured, and apparently not even talking to each other. _Weak_ , he thought with hateful disdain. So much for Wyatt's much lauded _family_.

John Henry Holliday - now he deserved some respect. He wonders if he will be the one to best his lieutenant?

But the other man. Now the other man is _interesting_. He can feel a confused energy in his essence, like something has been shoved in where it doesn't belong.

Let's see. Let's just see if I can just take it out again.

He looks over to his lieutenant.

"Time." 

 

* * *

 

When Nicole had started her descent, Waverly had wandered some distance off from the truck, finding she couldn't bear to watch her girlfriend go over the ledge after all, no matter how many assurances she'd heard about how easy the climb was and how safe her gear. Wynonna had followed her, hoping to finally have a chance to at least stand and wait together, even if they couldn't yet talk.

Doc had drifted off and up to the road, not fooling anybody pretending he wasn't in a sulk because of not being able to help any. And Dolls was still at the truck, head bent over his phone as he remotely updates their database of revenant locations and kills.

So they are scattered and distracted, when everything seems to happen at once.

 

* * *

 

"Hey! Hey, something's happening with the rope!"

Nicole is nearly to the shelf where Peacemaker lies when she feels her harness quiver and twitch. On instinct she scans for a secure hold, finds safe and weight-bearing places for her feet, and steadying holds for her hands, flattening and balancing her body tight against the cliff in the suddenly gusting wind. And not a second too soon as she feels the harness slacken completely, and the long red rope she'd been secured to start to fall, and slither and slip down the cliff-face until the severed end whips right past her.

"Guys? Waverly?!"

She looks frantically up, and down, then up again. It's only a couple of moves down to the gun, and she makes it to the shelf easily. Picks up Peacemaker, sticks it securely through the harness, hurriedly lashing some of the now useless climbing rope to secure it.

Can she hear shouting up above? It's hard to tell in the wind.

"Shit. Goddamned, bloody, _frickin_ ' Earps."

And she starts to climb.

~

Above, Dolls is on his knees, grappling at his throat and unable to gasp even a single breath. He can feel something in him _tearing_. He sees the Earp sisters in the distance but can't shout to alert them, his eyes are bulging with the effort and pain of it, but he can't make a sound, can't shout to warn Nicole of the man in black, sawing through her rope with a thick serrated blade.

Up above Bulshar releases the hold of his mind for a second to readjust, to search for the right place to pull and twist. It's enough for Dolls to take a deep breath, and yell.

"Wynonna!!"

She turns, as does Waverly, and Doc, and suddenly it's pandemonium. 

Bulshar just watches them a second, gleeful at the panic he can see. The younger girl is screaming again, running to the edge of the cliff, and making a sound of anguished pain purer than he thinks he's ever heard. The heir is torn, frozen between sister and her friend, who is now struggling for breath and to get up from his knees.

Holliday has his weapon raised and aimed at the man in black, but Bulshar doesn't want that yet, so he flicks an arm in his direction, and smiles in satisfaction as his arm jerks backwards, his gun gone flying, and Holliday is left spun around and crouched down, cradling his gun arm with his other, howling in pain.

His lieutenant has now reached the other man, who has risen to his feet, and they take a hold of each other, wrestling for control.

Interesting. Bulshar can feel something rising in him. _Interesting_.

Bulshar dispassionately observes Dolls take a deep breath, and when it comes out again, it comes out as fire. An enveloping, billowing fire of rage, and Bulshar watches, impressed, as his lieutenant's skin blackens and burns.

It's a fascinating weapon, but they can't be left with it, so Bulshar reaches out again, feels the source, and this time finds a clear hold, and _pulls_.

And the flames flicker and die, and the man collapses senseless to the floor.

It's a good day, Bulshar thinks. His failure of a lieutenant has been suitably punished. The irritating loose end of the survivor finally tidied up; and the two men the Earp girls rely on incapacitated, if not worse. Bulshar reaches out, and senses - yes, it doesn't look good for the no-longer-fire-breathing-man. His heart has stopped.

Meaning the sisters are left vulnerable, nakedly unprotected without their menfolk. He will come back for them, and it will be easy.

He leaves, smiling a cruel, satisfied smile.

~

Nicole reaches the top of the cliff to Waverly's panicked grateful arms, but they've not got time for that now, because Wynonna is kneeling over Dolls, who is lying motionless next to the body of a blackened, burned corpse.

"Jesus...Wynonna - let's just pull him over here a second...okay."

She feels for a pulse, can't find one, and he's not breathing either. Training kicks in and Nicole tilts his head, closes his nose, and blows the first long breath into him; and then starts compressions.

"He said he'd called us in, right?" she asks the silently worrying Earp sisters, each kneeling the other side of Dolls, Wynonna holding his hand, Waverly holding her.

They nod in unison, and thank God he had because she can hear the sound that for most people means fear and trouble, but for an officer of the law, meant safety and order.

Sirens.

 

* * *

 

At the hospital, Nicole had been pulled a million different ways. All she had wanted to do was stay with Waverly, hold her hand through her scans and assessments, and reassure her that she herself was alright after her unscheduled free climb.

But Dolls had been rushed into the ER, and from then to the ICU, alive, but just barely. Wynonna and Doc had each needed persuasion bordering on the physical to leave his side, despite the awful looking state of Wynonna's face, and the long jagged cut all the way down Doc's right arm. And she'd been needed to give statements about what on earth had happened.

_Any other town than Purgatory_ , Nicole fumed as her story that the military man had self-immolated, that Doc's arm had been scraped in a fall, and that Dolls just had a weak heart and had taken fright at the cliff was accepted without question.

But finally, hours later, all was quiet, and she was free. Free to go to Waverly.

~

_Where's Nicole? I know she'll be busy. And I know we've come through worse, and I probably shouldn't need her like this, but..._

Waverly sighed.

"You okay, baby girl?"

The Earp sisters stood side by side outside the ICU in the timeless hospital twilight, gazing in at Dolls' motionless form. They were wearing a matching set of bandages on their faces, and beneath them, matching troubled expressions.

"What you started to tell me. Before."

Wynonna closed her eyes, bowed her head, and waited.

"She's in prison?"

"Yup. Uh-huh."

"How long?"

A beat.

"Always. Since she left."

"Right. God. And..." Waverly takes her own deep breath, not wanting to be the other side of the answer to this question.

"How long have you known?"

Wynonna doesn't reply, but just turns and meets her sister's wounded eyes. And words aren't needed, because Waverly gets it, and her face crumples as she turns away from Wynonna, wanting not to believe, but knowing it's the truth.

"Why didn't you _tell_ me?"

"You were just a kid, Waves! Everyone told me to keep it quiet. And she's a world of pain, baby girl. Trust me, if you'd have had some of the visits I've had - "

"You've been _visiting_ her?!" Waverly explodes, loud enough for a nurse the other side of the glass to look up and frown. She manages to quieten the volume of her voice, but the pain and frustration still ring out loud and clear. "I could've been visiting her? All this time?"

Wynonna takes a deep breath, and blows it slowly out again.

"You couldn't, actually. She made me promise I'd never bring you. That was an absolute rule, even at her craziest."

Waverly just stares.

"I always thought she loved me."

"She did, Waves. I don't know why she wouldn't see you, but I know she loves you."

"Right. Sure. And your excuse? I'm an adult now, Wynonna, why haven't you told me til now? Why _are_ you telling me now, for that matter?"

Waverly can hear herself slipping into the petulant tone she hates in herself. But, for crying out loud, if she can't be pissed at Wynonna now...

"Bulshar's risen. And she always talked about him, Waves, we need her - "

"Oh because Bulshar turned up?! Of course, Mr Big Demon man puts in an appearance and now it's important to you all of a sudden that I know my mother's been two miles down the road _this entire time_?! God! I can't believe I ever thought - "

"Waves, it's not like that, I promise - "

"Shut up. Just shut _up,_ Wynonna."

Waverly is clipped, a rage too deep for expression now. Wynonna wisely waits, as long as she can.

"I'm so sorry. So, so, so sorry."

Nothing.

And then.

"Hey, guys."

Waverly closes her eyes at the softer voice, the voice that means safety, and comfort. _Nicole_.

"How is he?"

Wynonna shrugs. "Same. We just wait, now. Everything okay?"

"Yeah. The story for what it's worth is that he set fire to himself."

Waverly hears the barely veiled frustration in Nicole's tone, and finally finds composure enough to turn and face her.

And for a second, forgets all about her own pain.

Nicole looks tired, and strained, and though she knows others can only see her calm and in control front, Waverly knows the upset that lies beneath it.

"Hey, you." She takes a step forward, and places a hand to Nicole's cheek. Sees her eyes flutter shut, just for a second, and knows she's right.

Her girlfriend is strong, so strong; but Waverly knows that doesn't mean she's tough, or hard. She feels these days just as deeply as any of them. Deeper, in some ways; Waverly has never met someone with such a bone-deep sense of responsibility for events so thoroughly outside her control. Except for Wynonna, perhaps.

God. Wynonna.

"How are you doing, Waves? How's the head? Any dizzyness?"

She looks up at Nicole, deep brown eyes gazing down at her, equal parts love and concern and need. And answers by stepping forward, and winding her arms around her waist, and feeling Nicole's settle around her own shoulders, where they belong. She feels in Nicole's posture an attempt to stay strong, still; so she tightens her hold, and feels the shift, feels Nicole let go, just a fraction.

There. _I've got you, too, Nicole._

"I'm okay." She moves one hand, up and down her love's back. "I'm okay."

 

* * *

 

Nicole lay on her back in the half-light of dusk, a chasm to her side, in the form of a silent, walled off Waverly Earp.

Waverly had explained on the way back from the hospital, in halting and careful words, what she had learned from Wynonna. And Nicole had wanted to break something, to go to Wynonna and break _her_ , but she'd watched the love of her life sit still and quiet and so, so contained in the passenger seat next to her, and had known that this wasn't a thing for rage. Not yet.

But then they'd got back to Nicole's, and she'd watched as her girlfriend had retreated further and further into herself. First she'd distanced herself physically from Nicole, steering away and swerving around Nicole when they crossed paths in setting the table for dinner, where normally there'd be casual warm touches and stolen kisses. Then she’d dropped eye contact too, and her replies to Nicole's increasingly awkward sounding attempts at conversation grew more and more stilted and closed off. Until she’d finally fallen into to a complete, unresponsive silence.

They'd moved to the couch, and put on a film, for the sake of something to break the silence. But instead of their usual tangled comfortable sprawl, both were sat stiffly in their seats at opposite ends of the couch; and instead of the film masking the silence, it almost amplified it, the oppression of their wordlessness heavy on them both.

After a half hour of nothing but her glassy eyes looking straight through the television set, Waverly had shook her head and in a quiet, toneless voice, had just said, “I'm tired. Do you mind if I crash?”

When Nicole had said of course not, and asked carefully if it would be alright for her to come too, Waverly had just shrugged. “It's your house.”

So it was that they lay, side by side and miles apart, too early to sleep, in that awful limbo wrongness of a daily routine out of its right time.

 

~

 

“How are you still here?”

It's much later when Waverly's hopeless flat whisper breaks into the dark.

_Careful, Nicole, be careful now_. 

“Where else would I be, Wave?” she replies, simply.

No answer. Until, in a voice of hopeless, helpless anger.

“Why are you still here? You don't deserve all this...this _crap._ ”

Nicole has been trying her hardest to keep still for Waverly, but turns at this, and then leans up on one elbow. Looking at her love's face so full of loss and pain, all she can do is speak her truth.

“Because I love you.”

Waverly's eyes close as she shakes her head. She brings both hands up over her face, squeezes the heels of her hands against her eyes, but Nicole can see tears escape and run down her face as she struggles for breath.

“I wish you wouldn’t. You’re so good. I wish you had...someone better. Someone who’s not just so completely... _worthless_.”

Nicole knows Waverly needs space, but she can’t hear that, she just can’t, and so she moves towards her, praying that her girl will let her, but no; Waverly senses the shift and moves as fast as she has all night, flinching away from Nicole. Who freezes, aching with her whole being to hold Waverly, but somehow, managing to hold still.

“ _Please_ Nicole. I can’t...I just can’t…”

It takes everything she’s got, but Nicole rolls back and away from her girlfriend, who’s now curled up on her side in an almost foetal position, shaking and trying not to cry.

They lie there, Nicole staring up at the ceiling, listening helplessly to the hitching breaths and stifled sobs next to her.

In a voice one half fierce vow, one half simple realisation, Nicole hears herself say.

“I will never not be here for you, Waverly. Whatever happens, with the curse, or your family, or, or, or even with us. I will never not be here for you.”

She feels a movement in the sheets next to her. Waverly has stretched out a single arm, and her hand, still balled into a fist, rests a breath away from her own shoulder.

When she feels a moment later the lightest touch, the back of just one of Waverly’s knuckles against her skin, the ceiling starts to swim and blur. Through the lump growing in her throat, she whispers into the night.

“I will _never_ not be here for you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our poor, poor internalises-everything-bad-that-happens-to-her Waves.
> 
> And what a thing for Wynonna to keep from her. 'Sneaky squirrel' doesn't quite cover it, for my money. You might imagine I explore this a little in the next chapter...
> 
> Speaking of which, I want to apologise for the delay on posting this one, and likely delay to the next couple of installments too. Been working ten hour days and seven day weeks for the last month, which is a BIT FUCKING MUCH if you ask me. Rude when real life gets in the way of fic life.


	4. 3: Gods and Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wynonna thinks back to the days before she met Dolls; and Waverly struggles with her new knowledge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...coupla disclaimers.
> 
> The first is that, even by Seda standards, this episode is heavy with melancholia. I'm kinda trying to keep broadly in line with the emotional beats of the season, even if my plotting is different, and 3x03 (which I love by the way) is a sad one. And so this one is somewhat of a bummer for much of it.
> 
> I will try to do a fun couple of episodes soon, I promise.
> 
> The second is just to give you fair warning that this chapter is basically all about Wynonna.
> 
> And Wynonna very much likes men.
> 
> And sex with men...
> 
> So yeah, that's a thing. Nothing graphic from the actual act, because, boak - whatever consenting adults want to do in the privacy of their own home, and so long as they don't come on here and shove it in our faces, amiright?! But there's references to heterosexuality at play here, for sure. So if that is vehemently not your cup of tea to read about, I'd skip this installment.
> 
> Having said all that, my little lesbo heart obviously rebelled, and so I may have also accidentally written a rather more elaborate Wayhaught scene as if by way of compensation...and I may have possibly had to have upped the rating of the whole fic accordingly...don't read it in public is all I'm saying. I'm going to go ahead and give the customary *ahem* in relation to this right here in the starter notes rather than leave it to the end.  
>  _*ahem*_

Wynonna Earp sat at the bedside of one Xavier Dolls. Listening to his steady breathing with a relief tempered by the constant reminder of the heart monitor's cold electronic pulse.

The doctors had been encouraged by his progress ever since he'd been pulled into hospital, fighting for his life. He had strong vitals, and strong brain function; in fact, they couldn't actually seem to find anything wrong with him.

But he just simply didn't wake.

“Are you gonna wake up, Dolls? Are you gonna wake up and give me hell for leaving that hunter revenant hanging out there, just to sit with you?”

Wynonna's voice is her usual insouciant mumble. But then it drops to something quieter, softer.

“It's irresponsible, I know. God Dolls. I'd give anything to hear you give me shit for that. I deserve it. I deserved every last bit of shit you gave me."

Nothing, but the steady, unvarying tone of the monitors. Wynonna propped an elbow on a knee, and then her head on her fist, and gazed at Dolls' sleeping face.

"You know, when we met, I didn't believe in me either.”

The coral pink linen, beige plastic tubing, and insultingly colourful walls of the hospital room faded out in her mind's eye, to be replaced with blue, and blue, and white.

 

Greece.

 

~

 

Seagulls screamed and dive-bombed the ferry, swooping to catch the handfuls of bread that delighted tourists and wizened old locals alike tossed off the side.

Wynonna adjusted her sunglasses, then the battered rucksack on her back. It was chafing her shoulders; she'd let them get burned again.

All around her was blue and white. The deep changing blue of the seas. The white of the arguing, snapping gulls. A lighter blue of sky, almost washed out by the searing noon sun, reflecting harshly off the painted white of the ferry and hurting her eyes, even under the dark of her glasses.

“Coffee. I need coffee...” she muttered to herself, and wandered inside, heading towards the serving counter at the end; comforted by the low familiar hum of the ferry.

“Ena metrio.”

She took it outside to drink, and, sitting on a bench towards the front of the ferry, saw more white up ahead. Sea mist rising high into the air.

 

~

 

Greece calmed her, she'd found. The wide open seas. The anonymity of travelling in a country with legends greater than the Earps'. And the never-ending islands; always another island to run from or to.

There was also something about the people themselves that suited her. Of course she enjoyed the hedonism of the late night meals, endless fish and ouzo, mezes and tsiporou, and incoherent laughter at men with arms outstretched dancing their ritual, boastful dances. But it wasn't just the fun the Greeks had, it was the determined fun they had in spite of the impending shadow of work in the morning, or for many of them, the heavier burden of worklessness. And then when morning came, it was in keeping with her own habits to fall in with the almost instant decamping to cafes to drink coffee, and muse, and just be.

And no-one said it; but there was a great sadness to the shabby, underemployed, once great civilisation. Reduced to living on its looks, knowing that the bad things that had happened to it had irrevokerably happened: never to be reversed.

That suited her, too.

 

She'd got by on casual bar work at first, but then found her own peculiar niche. She'd easily fall in with a local group in a bar or restaurant, charming them with her smatterings of Greek, her wild charismatic energy, and sometimes when she felt like it, her body.

She'd hang out at the restaurant daytimes, until a likely looking set of nervous English speaking tourists would pass by - Germans, Americans, Brits. Whereupon she'd put on her best Greek accent and break into a loud and fluent sounding stream of purest gibberish-Greek. The waiters and cafe loiterers, in on the joke, would laugh, and reply in the real thing, whereupon Wynonna would catch the eyes of the curious tourists, and call out.

“Hey there! Are you visiting our beautiful town? I've been here for years, I could show you around if you wanted?”

She'd give them the tour of their lives, assigning unlikely ancient origins to clearly 20th century monuments, spinning amazing and completely fabricated tales of local derring do in the war of independence, and then lead the group back to the restaurant, promising them despite the clear evidence of their own eyes that it was the best one in town. Where, overawed by the excitement of the day, they'd tip her generously for the tour, and pay the vastly inflated restaurant bill without question.

Wynonna and her new friends would split the difference on that, and that would pay for their own, post closing-time revelry.

And all would be fun, and careless, and joyful, living on her wits and her charm; until the locals she'd befriended started to want to get to know her.

“So, Wynonna, where are you coming from?”

“Where did you learn to being so funny, huh?”

“Why did you come to our beautiful Hellas?”

 

And she'd leave.

 

~

 

She peered out the front of the ferry, and yes, now she could see it.

The shadow of an enormous black rock emerged, jutting from the sea; shrouded in mists but utterly indifferent to them. It loomed, five thousand feet of granite dropped in the sea at an improbably steep angle; sat there like an otherworldly sentinel from another time and a place.

Which, in a way, it was.

Samotrace. _Samotraki_ to the Greeks, home of the Temple of the Great Gods, where stories told of ancient gods rubbing shoulders with intoxicated sailors and wild, naked, dancing women. Now lost far in the northernmost part of the Aegean, halfway between nowhere in particular and the back end of beyond. Summer population of under a thousand, year-round population of not even that; and so remote that only gods, goats, and those too stubborn to let the lack of tourists put them off, remained.

"Nice to meet you, Samotraki. Maybe you'll manage to be even smaller and shittier than my own hometown, huh?"

A tiny, black-clad old woman to her right looked at her, alarmed; not understanding the words but clearly picking up the sentiment. Wynonna grinned, wickedly, and the woman shifted uncomfortably down the bench.

  
~

 

When they docked, Wynonna checked out the town centre.

Calling it a town was being generous.

It was three tacky looking bars, two scooter hire places, and one run-down looking hotel. A local sat outside of each, nominally in charge, but each looked just as indifferent to her passing trade as the rock had the ferry. Even the stray dogs panting on the dockside failed to express any interest, not deigning to give her the courtesy of even the lazy lift of their heads off their paws that their compatriots on the mainland had.

On her way back, she assessed her options. Outside the first scooter hire place was a young woman, staring at her with the baleful disdain she was starting to recognise in the young, beautiful, and utterly frustrated and bored.

"Nope..." she murmured, under her breath.

Two doors down though? "Bingo." A man, not old enough to be described as middle aged, but far too old and plain for the shorts and vest he had on. Plain enough to be useable.

She hiked her breasts up, and her top down, and sauntered over, with an open grin. 

"Yassou. Milate Anglika?"

 

~~~

 

'Cause I gave you all I got to give, and no that ain't no way to live, I told that Devil, to take you back. I told that Devil, to take you back.

 

~~~

 

Nicole awoke to an empty bed.

For a second the memories of the night before caused worry to surge, but then she heard the comforting sound of dishes and running water coming from downstairs, and smelt something sweet-smelling cooking too. She sat up, yawning and stretching, and wandered down to see what Waverly was up to.

When she got to the kitchen door she hesitated, just leaning on the doorframe, guiltily enjoying the sight she was confronted with without announcing her presence.

Waverly was at the sink, fully dressed and with an apron on. The table was set, and there was a coffee pot, fresh orange juice already poured, and a poinsettia in a vase on the side. The room was warm from the oven, and a little steamed up from the cooking, and the whole thing added up to some simple scene of domestic bliss that in their life in Purgatory was rare to the point of being incongruous.

Nicole felt bad about interrupting before Waverly was ready for her, but her stomach was grumbling at the enticing smells, and she couldn't wait any longer. With a smile already tugging at her lips, she spoke.

"Morning, baby."

Waverly span, jumped, put a hand to her chest. "Whoa! Nicole, you made me jump!"

"What's all this?"

Waverly beamed at the sight of Nicole's sleepy, puzzled, but tickled reaction to her work.

"I just thought I'd surprise you. We've got muffins heating in the oven, or there's pancake mix made up if you prefer, and, here, I grilled some bacon for you - oh wait silly me, let me pour you some coffee first..."

Waverly is practically dancing around the kitchen as she gestures to each item. Nicole watches her, happy to see her in this kind of mood, and awash with love for the sight of this sunny Waverly, exuding all the warmth and positivity that she'd first fallen in love with.

But she was puzzled, definitely. How on earth had she gone from last night, to this?

Nicole yawns again, and ambles over to where Waverly is testing a pan's heat by dropping a teaspoon of batter into the iron. Absent mindedly, and like she's done a hundred times, she drops an affectionate arm around her girlfriend's shoulders as they watch the batter sizzle and firm up.

Waverly leans into the touch, just for a second. And then wriggles away, making a big show of taking the pan over to the sink to wipe off the speck of batter.

Oh. _Oh_. Right.

"You okay, baby?"

"Fine. I'm good."

Waverly's voice is a little high, a little shaky, and she doesn't meet her lover's eyes.

Nicole doesn't push. She knows better than that. So she just sits down, and lets Waverly fuss and run around after her.

~

And in truth, it _is_ nice. The breakfast is amazing, and the warmth of the kitchen combined with the fresh life of the flowers in the bright morning light chase some of the coldness and fear of their near death experiences the day before away; and Nicole keeps getting lost looking at her girl, so beautiful, so busy, so chatty and charming. For her own part, she's still in the pyjama pants and vest she sleeps in: and she's confident enough in both herself and their relationship to both catch and understand the looks Waverly's giving her, the slight bite of her lip as her eyes roam over Nicole's arms, her shoulders, her breasts.

So when they finish, Nicole sits back for a second, watching, and thinking. _She's not talking about it, yet. Maybe there's another way to start?_  Waverly is clearing up plates around them, and so on one pass, Nicole reaches out and captures a hand, and looks up with as soft a look as she can.

"Come back to bed?"

Again Waverly stays still in the touch for a moment, and again, she pulls away.

"I've got to clear all this up. And you've got to go to work."

_Okay. Not for another three hours yet, and I can do the dishes, but. Okay._

"This was amazing, Waves. But - can I ask why today? Are you sure you're feeling okay?"

Waverly is a little snippy in her reply as she starts putting things in the sink with just a fraction more force than is necessary.

"Can't I make my girlfriend a breakfast to say thank you without getting the third degree?"

Nicole looks at her, levelly, not saying anything, until finally Waverly is forced to look around and catch her eye.

"You can make me breakfast anytime, Wave. But you've got nothing to thank me for."

"No?"

Palpable upset, now, as she leans back on the sink, arms crossed tight over her chest.

"No." Nicole is soft. She leans forward, ducks her head to catch Waverly's eyes, dropped again. "Hey. I mean it."

"You nearly died. Again. Because I got myself kidnapped, and my sister lost her gun down a frickin' _cliff_. And then you have to lie to your colleagues for us, and I know how much you hate that, and then you take me home, and I'm a mess, and I can't even _touch_ you, and - "

"Hey - hey. Don't be like that, Waves. What you found out yesterday - I can't believe it. I still can't. It's a big deal, okay, Waves? You're allowed to be upset."

"Maybe. But you don't deserve this. You don't deserve any of this. You're so good, Nicole, and all I bring you is - "

"Hey!"

Waverly looks up, startled at the vehemence of Nicole's interruption.

"You bring me love, and happiness, and a, a companionship I honestly never thought I'd find. And a family, and okay, yeah - " Nicole tilts her head, and quirks an eyebrow, "it's one hell of a family. But I don't think you know - don't think you understand what a big deal it is to me to be part of something like this. To be part of a family. Okay?"

Waverly just nods, told, and more than a little taken aback. And Nicole's eyes soften again.

"And you can make me breakfast any time you want to. But you don't need to. And you _don't_ need to be instantly okay with everything you're going through. But."

Nicole hesitates. Waverly is looking back at her, on the brink of giving into and accepting the kindness Nicole is showing her. Does she really want to threaten that?

But no. It's too important. They've been through this too many times. So she continues, still in a quiet voice, but a serious one.

"But you do need to be honest with me, Waves. And this - " she gestures at their perfect breakfast - "was genuinely lovely. But I'm not sure it's one hundred percent honest."

Waverly tightens her lips into a thin line, looks down again, ashamed to have been so easily caught out.

"It's okay, Wave. But I'm not other people, okay? Don't treat me like I am."

There is a long, hanging silence. And then Waverly looks up, takes a shaky breath, and just nods.

 _Okay_. Nicole exhales in her own relief. _That could have gone a lot worse than that._

The moment is interrupted by a ring of the door bell, followed by a knock, followed by another ring.

"Alright, alright where's the fire." Nicole grumbles as she gets to her feet, but Waverly's past her in a flash.

"I'll get it, sweetie, you're not dressed."

Nicole lets her go, sitting back down and looking idly over her shoulder in the vague direction of the living room. She hears the door open, but instead of the sunny trilled hello she's expecting to hear from her girlfriend, slipping back into her outside-world self again, she hears a single, low word.

"You."

Then a rush of feet, which Nicole sees as she rounds the door into the living room is Waverly running up the stairs, and Wynonna stepping into the house, wanting to pursue her, but just about held back by uncertainty and shame.

"Waves? Baby girl? Come back down a second, I need to talk to you!"

Nicole takes the few strides to stand and physically block the bottom of the stairs.

"Hi Wynonna."

"Hi Haught. Can you let me up to see my sister please?"

"If she wants to see you she can come down to see you."

"Right. Right. Except, see, I don't know if you noticed, but I might have just completely betrayed her trust and fucked up our relationship beyond all repair, you see, so I don't know if she particularly feels like coming to see me. So I need to go to her."

Wynonna tries to push past Nicole, who blocks her, frustrated by the interaction, and beyond frustrated at Wynonna, who pushes again. And then she might block Wynonna a little too strongly, and Wynonna herself might push a little harder, and soon they are struggling, awkwardly, incongruously, Wynonna in her fringed leather jacket and Nicole still in her nightwear. 

"Just - let me _past_ , Haught."

"Get out. Get out. You've hurt her enough, get _out_."

They're trying to keep their voices quiet, but they're struggling now, and the tussle becomes almost a fight, pushing each other back and forwards, Nicole bumped up against the wall at one stage, Wynonna nearly managing to take a step onto the first stair before Nicole swings her around, deflecting her off and into the stair-post with an audible thump. Wynonna's wiry dirty tactics are nothing Nicole hasn't seen arrestees do a hundred times before, and so it's relatively easy to deal with, easier still as she can see Wynonna is holding something back. Nicole's holding back too, scared more of the bubbling anger inside herself that calls for a greater physicality, the sort that she despises when she sees it in other, less disciplined cops. But still. They're both giving it enough.

"You two cut it out _right_ this _second!"_

They freeze, hands locked on each other's clothes and arms, looking up the stairs at the sight of a red-eyed, furious younger Earp, waving a finger at them both.

"You think this is helping, huh?! You think this is what I want? Nicole, take your hands off of my sister. I can fight my own battles thank you very much."

She does, and they both step back, guiltily straightening their clothes.

"And you. _You_. I - I can't even _look_ at you."

"Baby girl - "

"Don't you dare. Don't you _dare_ baby girl me."

Wynonna just looks up, helpless. There is a long, tense silence, as Waverly stands arms crossed again, glaring down at her sister, who is stood, open and apologetic but now she's here, completely lost for words.

"What? Hmm? I'm waiting, Wynonna."

A silence again, until eventually Wynonna sighs, raises her arms up in the air and then lets them drop heavily to her sides in a gesture of defeat.

"I'm sorry. That's all I wanted to say, for now. I'm just so sorry."

Waverly face hardens.

"Right. You're always sorry, Wynonna."

And she turns, and goes back up the stairs, out of sight.

Wynonna looks to the ceiling, and takes a deep, deep breath. Wanders off to the middle of the room, then turns, hands on her hips.

"I am. I really am sorry you know. But I'm not shitting her, our mother is fucking nuts. It wasn't as bad a choice not to tell her as it looks."

"Riiight."

Wynonna scowls at the clear note of judgement she hears in this, but manages to hold back a retort. Instead just asks in a quiet voice.

"Is she okay?"

Nicole looks at her a long time. And then responds, herself quieter now too.

"I don't know, Wynonna. I'm working on it. I think it might take more than a few sorrys."

"Fuck. Yeah. _Fuck_. I am sorry, though. I'm sorry to you, too."

Nicole nods her acknowledgement, and Wynonna twists one side of her lips into a wry half-smile, and they don't need any more words. They've got their own shorthand by now, and they know this means truce. So Nicole gives her own small conciliatory offer.

"I just worry about her, you know?"

Wynonna blows out a tired breath as she turns to leave.

"Yeah. Me too, Haught."

Nicole watches her go. Sees her half turn in the door, just before leaving.

"I'm glad she's got you on her side, Nicole."

And then the door closes.

 

* * *

 

The noisey fidget of the cicadas is almost overwhelmingly loud in the otherwise dusty silence of ancient ruins. Wynonna wanders through the late afternoon heat, a half empty bottle of retsina dangling loosely from her fingers.

She doesn't even need the weak wine, not really. She's not drunk, only a fraction buzzed, having found to her surprise that that's as far as she needs to get here. There's something about this island, so remote, so empty, and so utterly uninterested in her, that quietens the otherwise ever-present need to run from sobriety.

In fact, the ruins around her seem drunker than she, the tipsy lean of the doric columns all around her stretching white and neglected to the sky.

Waverly would just love this _,_ she thinks.

_What are you up to right now, baby girl?_

She sits down on a marble something that was probably far too sacred for the wide legged, sprawling posture she adopted, tipping the bottle back for a deep draught.

When she rights her head, she sees in front of her another shorter pillar, overgrown with weeds, and sees creeping around it just like the vines had, a tiny pair of hands.

And then a small head peers around it too, and two curious, blue eyes look at her.

"Yassou" Wynonna offers.

The hands and eyes step further out, and a girl, maybe six or seven years of age, with long dark hair, and a sky blue but dirty dress stands, looking uncertainty back at her.

"Me lene Wynonna. Possas lene?"

The girl still looks unconvinced, and lets her long dark hair fall over her eyes. But doesn't take her eyes off Wynonna, who just smiles, curious herself, and raises a questioning eyebrow. And waits.

"Anna." the little girl eventually says, solemnly.

Wynonna raises her bottle to Anna in an equally solemn greeting.

"Harika pousas hnorissa, Anna." She takes a sip of her drink. "Are you a goddess, Anna? What's your excuse for hanging around this graveyard, huh?"

Anna just looks back at her, a note of challenge at Wynonna's changed tone and language. And then another voice drops into the mix, a deeper voice. Wynonna looks up, to see a twenty-something man wearing the branded overcoat of the museum. But she clocks the shorts and t-shirt under it, and the generally unkempt appearance, and Wynonna recognises it as the uniform of tourist-land's janitor. He's calling Anna by her name, and letting loose a stream of worried sounding Greek after it; the little girl runs over to him and grabs onto and then hides behind his legs, whilst the man drops a big heavy hand on her head, and strokes her hair idly, protectively.

"Hallo" he says, in heavy accented English.

"Hello. Yassas." says Wynonna in reply.

His eyes are just as blue as Anna's. And kind.

"Yassas. Yassou." he says back, holding her eye.

He's dark haired, broad, short. Not unhandsome, in his own way.

 

~

 

The next day, a Monday and so as Wynonna correctly guesses, a day where Anna would be in school, she goes back. She has two bottles of retsina this time, and a blanket.

 

~

 

They lie naked together amidst the ruins of two thousand years ago, the overgrown altars and monuments all around them. Sweat from their exertions only just gets a chance to evaporate before it's replaced with the simple sweat of the early afternoon's heat. The haze of the blue sky and the white marble surrounds them, and in the open honesty of where they've just been, they talk.

They can't actually converse, of course. Ioannis's English doesn't stretch beyond hello and thank you, and whilst Wynonna can get by on street Greek, his heavily accented island rat-a-tat is beyond anything she can decipher.

So they talk with signs and gestures instead, and slowly they work out a little about each other. Wynonna conveys the question of if Anna is his daughter, and though she actually recognises the word for sister in his reply, she enjoys the mime he uses to imply shared parentage, laughing at his exaggerated gestures. They carry on, a pantomime of facial expressions, and they find it so funny every time they manage to twig to another's meaning, they are both laughing uproariously, and wickedly, and joyously, when they realise they've understood each other, the satisfaction of having deciphered the over-acting outweighing the heavy fact of what they have just understood: both have sisters, neither have parents, not any more anyway; both are on their own.

They fall back to the blanket after that, the laughter fading. And turn to each other, again.

 

~

 

Wynonna stays on Samotraki for the longest time she's stayed anywhere yet.

She and Ioannis spend a lot of time together. They have sex, yes, a lot of time brief and functional and to the point, the way that most of the time Wynonna prefers it. But sometimes, particularly when he is coming off his shift at the museum, and when they wander through the deserted temple together, she lays down, and she lets him worship her body like she's a goddess, like the setting of ancient ritual and mystery seem to allow.

But they spend a lot of other time together, too. She finds a strange comfort in being released from the pressure of conversation; and stops feeling even the mild guilt she'd felt about that when she realises that unusually for a Greek man this is as much about him, as it is their lack of shared language. He is a quiet man, happy sitting at a waterside restaurant, slowly dismantling a grilled fish, whilst Wynonna picks at mezes, knocking back ouzo, both of them idly watching Anna playing at the edge of the beach.

She seems equally quiet, just as content without words and happy just in their simple company; whilst all around them the locals yammer in their stacato dramatic non-stop Greek, and tourists exclaim loudly over and over again, the food, the views, the _quiet_.

~

The clincher though is that when she startles from her sleep, shouting out and disoriented from her nightmares, he can't ask her where she's been, and she can't tell him; and that is the greatest comfort of all.

Because what she doesn't explain, can't explain, is that what she's awoken from is not just a bad dream, but instead, a series of truths she can't seem to run far enough from.

~

A biker's bar, and drunken men, boys, shouting, drinking, cheering out in bleary bluster. A young Wynonna swaggering through the crowd, swinging her hips, and then swinging a leather clad leg over the lap of the biggest and hairiest of them all. Barely wanting him at all, really, any more than he wants her, the whole thing a show, for each other, for themselves, for the cheering, baying crowd.

"Hi, Mav. Ya miss me?"

 

Sitting on the back of his Harley, the wind blowing around them, freedom and danger at every corner.

 

The sharp metal taste of adrenaline gone sour as he fights his first fight for her. Initially she's impressed and maybe a little turned on, but then quickly sickened, as what started as a flattering and seemingly chivalrous protection of her honour becomes nothing but an excuse for a fight, and then a one-sided one, the poor guy who'd offered her a drink curled and crumpled as the thwacks of a pool cue and boots rain down, the crowd of their friends chanting Mav-er-rick - Mav-er-rick behind them.

 

The hushed planning meeting. "I know how to get in, and I know what their security detail is. It's nothing, just old Joe who's been watching them for forty years. Kev's confirmed where the safe is, and Wynonna here has been practising those old Tritan tumbler locks. It can't go wrong."

 

The day, the night, the wild excitement and mischief of it all. "It won't go wrong babe, what's gonna go wrong? We'll be in and out before you know it, no-one will get hurt, no-one will get caught, you'll see." The snake smile of someone who called himself Maverick, the sure sign of a boy pretending to be a man.

 

The moment when excitement curdles to terror. "What are you two doing here - hey - what are you - aaahh!" The blade coming out of the guard, wet, colour indiscernible in the dark of the night but Wynonna knew, blood red.

"We can't leave him here, Mav. We can't. He's an old man, dude, he'll just bleed out if we leave him!"

"Open the safe. Open the safe. I need that money, Wy. You know I do. If I don't get that money...I _need_ it. Open the _fucking_ safe, Wynonna!"

Hands shaking so much she nearly couldn't feel the locks tumble. A rush of success when she does, and then her lover, her so called ride-or-die guy, pushing her out the way and grabbing fistfuls of notes, then grabbing her wrist equally dispassionately to haul her out and away. The horrendous choking gurgle of the security guard on the floor.

"We can't leave him! He'll die if we leave him, Mav, let's just stay and call someone - "

"We can't stay. Lock the door. _Lock it!_ "

The look of him. She'd thought him wild and sexy and dangerous once, but all she saw now was mean, venal, greed.

"If we lock this door, he is _going_ to _die!_ "

"If we don't, he'll ID us, and we're going to jail. I'm not going back there."

"It's not that bad, c'mon Mav - "

"You went to fuckin' juvie! This is the real deal! I'm not going back there! Ever!"

The sick feeling when he stands over her, and the knife, dripping, now points at her, and his eyes are dead, and violent.

"I'm not going back there."

The splash of tears on her hands as she fumbles the key in the lock, terrified. Of all the things she's feeling then, the memory of feeling embarrassed to be seen crying. _Christ_. The awful shame of relief as they bunk over chain-link fence, and onto the waiting bike. The final look back over her shoulder, at the bright neon factory lights.

Bleeker Industries.

 

~

 

And so when Wynonna awakes in the night, and clasps at the key on the long chain she keeps around her neck, Ioannis doesn't know why she cries, or what it means when she repeats through the tears, _I'm no good, I'm no good._  He just swings a heavy, hairy arm over her in comfort, which Wynonna, eventually, learns to let stay.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Waverly sits on Nicole's bed, legs pulled up and her arms wrapped around them, her head leaning on a knee, as she just thinks.

She actually feels a little calmer for having seen Wynonna. She knows she is still so, so angry at her, and hasn't even begun to put into thoughts let alone words the betrayal she feels.

But she understood when she saw her that Wynonna was her sister, and she loved her, and that eventually, they would just have to be over this. She had no idea how they would get there, but knew that one day they would have to, and she found herself comforted by the knowledge.

She sees out of the corner of her eye the door push open, and Nicole poke her head in. And Waverly, despite herself, feels a smile creep onto her lips.

Nicole's got her hair tied back now, and she's still in her vest, and she's standing there in that unconscious Nicole Haught pose of subtle strength and grace. And she looks _so_ goddamned hot.

"Hey you." Nicole says, carefully.

"Hey."

Nicole hesitates.

"Are you still planning on coming down the station, later?"

"Yep. I've got an idea about Dolls I want to run past Jeremy."

Waverly watches Nicole come more fully in the room, and thinks to herself, how on earth did I get so lucky? How did I find the one person on this planet who just _gets_ me?

Because she can see Nicole's concern for her still, see it in her uncertain expression and it just pouring from her body language; but sees also that she's holding herself back from asking again. She can see that Nicole understands she's not ready to put it into words yet, but knows she just waiting, patient and steady and just _there_ , like she always has been, right from the start.

 _I love you so much, Nicole_ , she thinks.

"Come here a second?" She stretches out a hand, and Nicole walks over, a rush of relief in her face as she takes the proferred hand, and sits down besides Waverly.

"Are _you_ okay, Nicole? Wynonna didn't hurt you?"

Nicole scoffs. "Please. I've had worse from thirteen year-olds."

Waverly giggles. "Well, that's about right for Wynonna to be honest."

And Nicole smiles too, her broad dimpled smile, and it looks so very good on her, Waverly can't help but pull on her hand, and lean over, and kiss her own smile into Nicole's.

And for a second that's all they're doing, simple smiling kisses, until Waverly feels something else in the touch of Nicole's lips on hers. A tenderness, and a love, and something residual from the day before, maybe some fear still, and a relief that they are both here in this moment, safe and warm and together.

The kisses change, and Waverly opens and turns her body towards Nicole, and she's still holding one of Nicole's hands on the bed but she feels it tighten, and then the touch of the other one on her shoulder, gentle, just barely caressing her, like she's something precious, like she's something not quite real. And her stomach drops with the feeling of that, and she kisses a little firmer, and then their mouths open and their tongues touch, just once, a flicker, and with that all of the darkness of the night before is gone, because Nicole is _here_ , and she's light, and warmth, and love.

Waverly slides down onto the bed, pulling Nicole with her, who follows her movement, somehow staying in the kiss, until they're tangled together on top of the sheets, kissing deeper, and slower. Waverly cups Nicole's face as she kisses her, runs her fingertips over the angle of her jaw, relishing feeling the movement of it in both Nicole's kiss and under her hands, amazed and grounded like she always has been at the feeling of Nicole shifting her weight half on top of her, the warmth and softness of her body, pressing smooth and firm against her.

They kiss, and they kiss, and Waverly can feel her hips already moving, can feel her need for Nicole so strong and urgent already. But this is the best she's felt in what seems like forever, and she doesn't want it to end, so she slows them down, softens the kisses, until they pull apart a fraction, Nicole holding herself up above her, gazing down, that look of loving concern again.

Waverly just looks up, into her eyes, and cups her face again, with both hands. Looks all over Nicole's face, studies her, caresses her face, her neck, her hair.

"Nicole" she breathes. "I...I..."

_I love you. I can't tell you that, because I know it's only me not saying it which is keeping us from forever, and I know I can't hold on to you. You're too good, and you deserve better than all this. But I love you so so much, and I just can't let you go yet. I need you just now. I need you._

She sees Nicole watch her silent dialogue. Wonders if Nicole knows there is a hope in her eyes, and then when she realises Waverly is not going to say anything after all, just the quickest flash of disappointment. But it passes, and is replaced again with that Nicole patience and care.

"I love you, Waverly."

She says it like she spoke to her after breakfast, with that breathtaking honesty that conveyed that she truly didn't expect anything from Waverly, except just to be herself.

It's too much. She pulls Nicole back down into another kiss, and this time it sears, and she can feel Nicole's desire in the depth of the kiss, and with that she can't put off her own need any longer. She finds one of Nicole's hands, and pulls it down under her shirt and back up to her breast, and groans into their kiss as she feels Nicole touch her, caress her, fingers working at her most sensitive spot through her bra. But she needs to feel real touch, and so quickly, in a haze, she's struggling out of her own top, and Nicole helps her out of it, and then she's undoing Waverly's pants and pushing them down whilst Waverly unhooks and discards her own bra, and suddenly Nicole's on her, the softness of the material of her own vest and pants feeling so good against her own naked skin, the way she moves on Waverly, the way she _touches_ her.

Nicole's kissing down her chest, and Waverly can't keep her body still, can feel the undulating waves of desire run through her as Nicole puts her open mouth to her breast, and oh _Jesus_ the bolts of pure electricity that run through her as Nicole kisses, and sucks, and so so gently, rakes the hint of teeth over the stiffened point, and then sucks again; and then she replaces mouth with hand as she kisses further down. Waverly feels kisses all across the soft skin of her lower belly, and she is nothing but need now, burning up with how much she wants Nicole, and her breath is coming short, and she is barely coherent with a whimpered  _oh my - god_ when she feels her underwear pulled down, and then there's a kiss, just on top of her, and Waverly _shudders_.

"Come here, come up here, I want you, I want to - "

Nicole gets it, and quickly comes back up her body, and Waverly opens her legs, feels Nicole slot and settle between them like it's where she belongs, and Waverly leans up to kiss her again, desperately, hard, and this time she hears Nicole groan, as she kisses back, and as Waverly cradles Nicole's face and neck again, she feels Nicole wrap her arms around under her, holding onto her shoulders, and god she feels so safe like this, so desired, so _whole._  When Nicole starts to rock against her, pushing herself up against Waverly as close as she can, Waverly shuts her eyes, and lets her head fall back, and nearly comes apart there and then.

She ghosts her hands down Nicole's sides, pushing up the bottom of her vest to find soft warm skin, pulling at Nicole's lower back, encouraging her thrusts, meeting each movement with a tip and push of her own. The thin material of Nicole's pants suddenly seems too much of a distance between them, and they both push frantically at the waistband of her pyjamas, pushing them down. When they reconnect Waverly's unsure if Nicole's even kicked them fully off, all she knows is that she can feel Nicole's naked hips as she pushes against her now. They get faster, and they're both whispering and cursing, until she hears the note of a question in Nicole's repeat of her name.

"Waves...oh...Waverly...can I...I want to..."

She opens her eyes to see Nicole's look, flushed, shaken with desire, but wanting something more. She looks up at the draw by the bed, and Waverly gets it, and nods, quickly.

"Uh huh. Yeah."

Nicole stops their movement for a second, but doesn't disentangle their position, just reaches a long arm out to the draw, fumbling it open, and Waverly feels herself pulled and rocked to one side as Nicole can't quite reach in the drawer but obstinately refuses to move from where she is, on top of Waverly and between her legs. She laughs, then, simple and happy, and Nicole laughs too, a little sheepish maybe, but mostly unashamed of not wanting to break this amazing connection between them, as she manages to take the toy out of the draw.

She hesitates then, and Waverly can read her mind. She doesn't want Nicole to move off of her either, doesn't want the interlude of fiddling with fabric and straps, and so she just pulls Nicole's hand holding the toy down between them by way of instruction.

"Try without it."

"Yeah?"

Waverly nods. And then her eyes shut again, and she lets out a long, low moan, because oh _Jesus_ H almighty  _Christ_ , yes that works. Nicole's pushing herself behind it, into her, and it's _deep_ , and though Nicole evidently can't control it like she normally would, that's not what this is about anyway. This is about closeness, and communication, and Waverly opens her eyes, and meets Nicole's, and they rock, slowly and deep, against each other, breathing into each other's mouths as they whisper soft yesses, whispering each other's names between hiccuping gasps and kisses.

Waverly can feel her breath getting shorter again, and can actually feel the flush starting on her chest. Nicole looks so close herself, the cute frown-lines of approaching climax starting to form on her brow as her movements get a little heavier, a little jerkier.

"Ni- Nicole - this is so good - but I want you - I want _you_ to - "

"Yeah. _Yeah_."

Nicole's voice is low, husky, urgent, as she draws back for the first time, and lets the toy slip out, and drops it off the side of the bed without a second thought, and then she touches Waverly just for a second, and then pushes inside, three fingers straight and deep, and Waverly cries out, cries out again when she feels them curl, and move; because the feel of Nicole inside her, oh god, it's so much, it's _everything._  But she's still not there, she still wants more, and Nicole seems to read her mind, because she's lowering herself down Waverly's body again, kissing her way down as she keeps the fingers moving slow and deep inside, and then there's a readjustment, and Nicole drops her head, and Waverly's vision whites out completely when she feels Nicole's mouth on her, and her fingers inside, and she opens her legs as wide as she can, and feels the pulse and shudder build within her, and it's just a few seconds more of the most incredible sensation of Nicole just _everywhere_ , and she digs her fingertips into Nicole's shoulders, hard, and shivers, and shudders again, and then her hips are jerking out of control, and her head arches back, and then with a stifled cry of _Ni-cole!_ she comes, hard, and then pulsing around the final echoes of movement of Nicole's fingers in her and tongue on her, she's coming, again, or still.

And maybe time stretches, because afterwards it feels like an eon has passed. Because Nicole crawls back up her again and collapses on her side, and Waverly rolls over to her, just about perceiving through the cloud of her dazed bliss that her lover's got tears in her eyes, and they curl into each other, both too drained to hold on tight, just leaning head against head, hands touching wherever they fall against the other, needing as much contact as they can manage. Somehow they push and pull the covers out from under them, and over them, and Nicole's fully crying now, laughing and crying with love and relief, as she looks at Waverly with an absolute adoration, and Waverly pulls then holds her close, and closes her own eyes, and slowly they calm, and still. And though Waverly can still feel her heart, pounding, she's so present in just this moment and there is nothing bad anywhere or anyhow anymore because Nicole's _here_ , and she makes her feel so, so loved.

She can hear the change in her love's breathing that tells her that Nicole has already succumbed to sleep, but she forces herself to hold off herself as long as she can. And basks in this perfect, perfect feeling.

 

 

* * *

 

 

One day Wynonna is swimming in the cold choppy seas off Samotraki, when she has the strangest realisation.

She's been taking great mouthfuls of the salty water, and floating on her back, blowing the water into the air in a great spout, much to the delight of a giggling Anna, who swims around her with the short confident strokes of an island child grown up half in the water. Wynonna has been pretending to be a great Kraken, and has been lazily chasing the much more nimble child around the shallows of the beach, whilst up on dry land Ioannis crouches over a fire, squinting through the smoke from his roll-up cigarette and the meat grilling on the fire.

She realises that she's actually _happy_  here.

It hits her like a thunderclap, the feeling such a foreign one to her. And for the first time in a long time she lets her mind wander to back home, and lets herself wonder how her own little sister is doing. She's reminded of chasing Waverly through the long grass at the back of the homestead when they were kids, remembers her giggling and shrieking in much the same way as Anna is now.

 _I used to be someone to you, didn't I Waves? I'm so sorry I let you down. I hope you're happy, too. I hope you're doing better now, without me_.

She looks up to the tufts of white clouds in the blue sky, and then turns and pulls with long languid strokes towards the shore.

~

Happy; she thinks later as they bite into the home cooked lamb wrapped in bread, and for once, no wine to wash it down; but boy oh boy broke as can be. Flat broke, in fact, which is why they've been cooking on driftwood and eating the cheapest bread and meat they can find.

She's tried out her con a few times, but it's not an island that gets a lot of foreign tourists, fewer still now it's headed to off-season. And Ioannis's caretaker's wage isn't enough to keep even him and Anna, let alone her, and so her already small stash of Euros has dwindled away to almost nothing at all.

So she's particularly excited to get her hands on the large party of well-spoken Brits she saw disembark from the ferry the day before, two families equally full of pompous stories of the scrapes they'd got in to when studying classics at Oxford.

 _Presumably before you became old and well fed and encircled with brash, grabby children,_ Wynonna had thought with some distaste, whilst she eyed her mark.

~

And so it is that the very next day she sits, and waits, and sure enough, hooks them in, having met enough monied Brits by now to know how to feed their egos.

"You look like you know what you're doing here with the ancient Greek, am I right guys? But I can show you the short-cut between the thermals and the temple, and hey, maybe you can help translate a couple of inscriptions I've never quite understood?"

The men swell with supercilious pride, and their wives exchange looks, pretending to be mortified, but really loving the fact their husbands can teach 'that American girl' something.

 _Fuck you, it's Canadian, and I'm all woman. Plus I bet my modern Greek kicks your Homer in the ass, you pompous jerk-offs._ But she smiles sweetly; and the con is on.

~

She's coming back from the final swing around the ruins with the adults, pleased with the tour and her flattering efforts. She's spent so much time there the tour is mostly fact-based now, which is a relief as, pompous or no, it turns out the group really did know their stuff.

She'd risen to the challenge, of course, and they're all heading back in a bantering friendly group, the tourists pleased at having been able to show off for this clearly knowledgeable young woman, Wynonna confident of her first decent pay day for a month.

Until they get back to the tiny museum and gift-shop, where they'd left the kids with Wynonna's promise that Ioannis would look out for them, and it all goes rapidly south.

Anna is stood in the middle of a ring of the children, who are teasing her, egging each other on, throwing increasingly unpleasant English phrases at her, laughing at the fact that Anna doesn't understand the words of what they're saying. But the playground tone translates just fine, and she's getting more and more distressed, turning round and round the circle trying for a single friendly face, her big blue eyes filling with tears. She tries to break out the ring, but the children don't let her, one of the boys shoving her bodily back in.

"Hey!" Wynonna's pace increases to a jog down the last few yards, vaulting over an altar like it's nothing. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

The kids shrug their shoulders, too spoiled to care what the paid help thinks of them.

"We were just playing."

"She didn't understand us or anything."

"We didn't _mean_  it."

Wynonna glares at them, and then glares at Ioannis, who has been standing anxiously by all the while. She waves an arm frustratedly at him, a wordless  _Why didn't you stop them?_  reprimand.

He shrugs his helpless response, looking up at the parents meaningfully;  _because I know how much you need the money._

The kids are oblivious to and bored by all of this non-verbal communication, and one takes advantage of the distraction of the adults to reach out, and pull Anna's hair. She squeals, and finally managed to break out the circle and run towards Ioannis who scoops her up into his arms, whilst Wynonna sees pure red and grabs hold of the boy who'd done it.

"You little _shit_ I'm going to - "

"Rupert! Say sorry to the lady."

"He needs to say sorry to Anna." Wynonna's voice is calm, but furious, as she turns to face the man.

The father baulks at this. Why should his child have to grovel to this little island girl?

"Well, and after all there's no harm done, no? I'm so sorry about little Rupert, though I'm sure you understand, boys will be boys!"

"Bullshit. Tour's over. You can take your precious little Rupert and you can all fuck right off our island."

"Now hang on a minute, there's no need for language like that - "

Wynonna is fronting up and the situation is escalating, until one of the wives pushes in, opening her purse.

"We're _so_ sorry, honestly. You've got a charming little girl, just charming. And so like her mother! Now, you must let us compensate you for your time."

"I don't need your money. Get gone."

Ioannis reads the push of the woman's purse even if he doesn't catch Wynonna's meaning, and says something, gesturing with wide eyes at the notes that are being held out.

"Okay, well yes fine, except that literally speaking, I do actually need your money." Wynonna snatches the bundle of notes that had been held out and stuffs them in her back pocket, without even looking at the value or number, raising her head and staring down her nose at the woman, just daring her to object.

Her husband now steps in, and pulls her and the children away, tutting.

"Come on, Jennifer, let's just go."

Wynonna walks over to Anna, who Ioannis is still holding in a hug. She's leaning her head against her brother's shoulder, looking shy and upset still, but she smiles a real smile when Wynonna chucks her under the chin as the final parting words float up from the party.

" _Honestly_. Talk about the collapse of Greek Civilisation..."

Wynonna doesn't betray what she's heard, but says to Anna in a sing-song voice,

"Can you say 'shit-heads', Anna? Say, 'shit-heads' "

"Sit-hets."

"Thatta-girl."

 

* * *

 

Black Badge offices, and Jeremy and Waverly are locked in discussion.

"Okay, so, as far as we know, he got sick when he was using his fire breathing, right?"

"Right..." says Jeremy, not following.

"But he didn't collapse when he was the full dragon. It was like that got put out, and _that's_ when it happened."

"So...I still don't understand your point."

"How did it work? What Black Badge did to you?"

Jeremy raises his eyebrows, unoffended by the question but just confused by its scope.

"Totally depends. Now, Dolls, that was likely some delta level change - sorry - that means, whole body and mind transformation. There would have been genetics, likely when he was young, and then some incantations, a few potions here and there..."

"Spells? Potions? Jeez, Jeremy."

"I know. Wild, right?"

"Okay, but then that helps then. I think. Like, his whole person was changed?"

"Yup. Pretty much."

"And we think Bulshar somehow put out the dragon side of him. But he did it instantly, right? How long did Black Badge work on changing him?"

"Oh man, years. Since he was a kid, probably. I mean, that's what they did on...anyway. Not relevant, Jeremy, this is Dolls we're talking about today."

Waverly puts a hand on his arm.

"We're talking about you, too, Jeremy, that's going to happen. But today?"

"Right."

"So. Here's what I'm thinking. He's been half man still, all this time, right? But when he was hurt, he was on his dragon side, and then that was pulled out of him, far, far quicker than it was put in. What if he somehow got - like - stuck?"

Jeremy thinks for a minute.

"You know, I think I've heard of something like that. Just let me - "

He flips open the laptop, and starts typing, and Waverly watches over his shoulders, both reading the results at speed, nodding practically in unison when each useful result comes up. Waverly goes back and forth to the enormous pile of dusty books she's lugged in, making notes, copying down phrases, asking Jeremy for further searches and clarifications, whilst he challenges, expands and refines.

Three hours later, and they've got a plan.

 

 

* * *

 

 

When Wynonna checks the value of the pile of notes, she's amused and delighted to find it in the hundreds. God bless the British and the near infinite value they'll put on avoiding making a scene.

It's enough to take them all out for a blow out meal at their taverna of habit. _Enough for a ticket home too_ , an unwelcome thought pops in from the guilty back of her mind. _You know what date is coming up..._

She drinks too much at dinner, as does Ioannis, and after he's put Anna to bed they gamely try to go to bed too, together. But he's too drunk, giggly on metaxa, and Wynonna's not really in the mood anyway, too settled and happy in herself to invite in the wild and sometimes troublesome emotions that sex can awake in her.

So they just fall asleep, snoring drunk and content, and as much as a couple as two people who are yet to have a proper conversation can be.

~

She's awaken in the night by Ioannis for once, rather than he by her nightmares. He is shaking her shoulder, and smiling almost boyishly down at her in the first grey light of the very early morning. She can hear the quiet swoosh, swoosh, of waves on the shore outside his window.

"What's going on?"

"Wynonna."

"Ne?"

He sits cross legged on the bed, and gestures for her to do the same, which, grumbling, sitting up, and adjusting her low cut vest into a semblance of decency, she does.

He waits until she's still, and facing him.

"Wynonna."

"Ioannis. This better be good. It's five in the morning and at this stage I'm basically sweating ouzo."

He looks at her, sweetly uncomprehending of what she has to say.

"Efkaristo, Wynonna. _Thank_ you."

She shrugs and looks away, uncomfortable. But he reaches, and tips her chin back around to face him again.

And he talks to her. He's looking seriously into her eyes, and speaking Greek fast and soft, without any expectation of her following it. Wynonna's not thrown by this; it's how they operate. They both say what they need to to each other, and it doesn't really matter if the other one understands.

 _Just like a real couple_ , Wynonna has cynically thought  to herself, more than once.

But there's something unusually earnest about the way he's speaking this morning. She gets bits and pieces of the speech; something about Anna, something about that day. Something about good, and not-good.

He turns, and picks a couple of things up from the cheap chipped drawers by his side of the bed. A scrap of paper, and, she recognises, beads with the blue and white circles Wynonna has seen all over her travels across the Mediterranean.

Ioannis is holding the beads out to her, and now some of what he's saying is starting to make some sense. He's still talking about good, but now he's also talking _about_ talking.

 _Oh, okay_ ; thinks the whip-smart part of Wynonna that she tries to keep buried from everyone's sight. _I get it. Greeks can't give compliments, because it calls down the evil eye. And this charm protects against that. And Ioannis is giving this charm to me..._

He has pressed the charm into her hands, and then he opens up the crumpled paper, and straightens it carefully on one knee.

He clears his throat.

And butchers the pronunciation. But Wynonna recognises the words, registering their meaning with something like shock.

"You are being  _good_ person, Wynonna. You are being  _good_."

No. _No_.

"Okhi. I'm not. I'm not a good person, Ioannis. You don't know, there's things you don't know..."

She pushes the beads away from her, her hand shaking, tears for some reason rising in her eyes. God, why is he doing this to me? This was our deal, our deal was we didn't _talk_.

"Ne. _Ne_. You are being good."

He takes the beads, and takes the necklace that always hangs round her neck, the one with the key. And ties the blue and white charms to it, carefully, whilst Wynonna just stares, and shakes her head back and forth and back again, and fails to stop the tears from falling.

~

She takes a long, long walk along the coast road. The towering rock of Samotraki's peak looming out of the dawn mists on her left, vengeful but aloof. The waves crashing against the shore, washing the island grain by grain away into the sea, the same sea that has washed the shores of so many places and times; the sea that she came over, and the sea over which she knows she has to return.

When, much later, she heads into town, she checks her email at an internet cafe. And finds a message from another world.

It's her aunt, Gus. Her uncle has died.

 

* * *

 

The impersonal beep, beep, beep, of the hospital room is unchanged. But the atmosphere at Dolls' bedside could not be more different from the silent vigil that they've been keeping to date.

The room is full, practically buzzing. Faces are solemn, but there's a hushed excitement about them all, for the first time in days, a feeling of hope.

Jeremy and Waverly are fussing over the placement of candles and the exact compass point that Waverly needs to stand at for the ritual to stand the best chance. Nicole is ducking her head in and out the room, checking Nedley is still outside on nurse-deflecting duty. Not helping, to be honest, as one uniformed cop outside a coma victim's bedroom draws the eye enough; two is down-right suspicious. But she's out of her depth in all the hocus-pocus, and if all she can do is check on Nedley, goddamn it she's going to check on Nedley.

Wynonna and Doc stand to one side, feeling slightly out of place. Doc is fiddling with the cap on a bottle of beer, and in his nervousness, it nearly twists off, until Wynonna elbows him hard in the ribs.

Until finally, they're all set, and it's ready.

"And this is definitely going to work, Waves? Reminding him of his human side is going to do it?"

Nicole is trying to be supportive, but everyone can hear the doubt in her voice.

Jeremy ducks his head from side to side. "Ehhh - I mean, it's not impossible."

"It's a long shot." Waverly supplies. "But it can't hurt, right? And even if the magic doesn't do it, there's a chance that he'll be able to hear what we say, and respond just medically anyway."

Wynonna looks up, straight into her sister's eyes.

"I think it's a great idea. And I think it's gonna work."

Waverly looks back. And the tiniest hint of a curve creeps onto her lips, before she clears her throat, and looks down at the notes she has in front of her.

"Ready, guys?"

And she starts reciting, a slow, steady Latin, and the candles flicker and waver.

~

Jeremy goes first. Waverly is needed for the recitation, and so he takes the items for both of them. From her, a scarf that Dolls wore throughout the long Purgatory winters. He folds it and places it next to his head on the pillow, and then touches one of his baseball caps against a sleeping hand, and then places that on top of the scarf.

"You're the best dressed man in Purgatory, Dolls." He bends down and stage-whispers, "Don't tell Doc I told you that."

Waverly's Latin develops a tone more giggly than solemn for a second, but she keeps going, as Doc steps up next.

"Well, and partner. Friend. I'm not gonna argue with you about that. Because, whilst you evidently have a, ah, more modern tailor than I, I can't help but be honest and say." He fusses and produces a bottle opener from somewhere, and flips off the top of the beer. "I have a far _superior_ taste in drink than you. But never let me come between a man and his libation of choice. To you, Dolls. For you."

He takes a swig of the bottle, and then holds it out to Dolls' sleeping form, and then, reverently, places it on the trolley by his bedside.

Nicole steps forward, then, the other side of his bed. She's holding his badge, and she carefully opens a hand where it rests on the covers, and closes it around the badge.

"Deputy Marshall Dolls. Thank you, for everything you've done for me." She ignores the curious eyes she can feel on her, from her girlfriend, from her girlfriend's sister. This moment is private, between her and Dolls, audience or none. "But you're not done yet. Purgatory needs you. We all need you."

Then finally, there's just Wynonna. She stands, and rocks back and forth on her heels, her hands stuck in her back pockets.

And then she takes a step forward, and puts her hands back under her hair, and unclasps her necklace.

She takes the keys, and the charm, and opens Dolls' free hand, and places them in his palm, and then gently closes her hand around his, around the necklace. She leans down, and places a single kiss to his forehead. And then pulls back, and whispers, quiet enough that the others can stand back and pretend like they can't hear it.

"You believed in me. When I didn't believe in myself. You believed in me. But I had to earn that, right? It's not something you give out for free. So when you believed in me, I did too.

Come back, Dolls. I don't need your fire. I just need you."

 

Waverly's words run out, and Wynonna steps back, and the steady tone of the monitor keeps on, oblivious, as they all stand, breathing their fading hope into disappointment.

 

And then Dolls' hand twitches around the metal links he holds, and his eyebrows pull just a fraction together.

And then his eyes flicker, open.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...
> 
> Dolls lives!
> 
> I've been feeling guilty ever since killing him off in one of my earlier fics; doubly so when the show then went on to do the same in not dissimilar circumstances...so this is my amends ;0)
> 
> Apologies for the wait getting this chapter out. And it's going to be a while til then next one, too. Real life continues to be a time-consuming bastard, so. We'll see.


	5. Episode 4: Families

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wynonna, Waverly, and Nicole finally talk about their family histories.
> 
> And old enemies make their own decisions on allegiances.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so so sorry for the delay in getting this update out, and the 'season' in general. I had hoped to be up to the Christmas episode by now...but been working like a maniac, and all the seasonal madness on top has gone beyond taking up every waking minute, and started eating into my middle-of-the-night theoretically non-waking minutes too - aka Seda's writing hour. 
> 
> Not sure it's done the old creativity many favours either. All work and no play and all that. But, see what you think.

Just another winter's day.

A gaunt, cloaked man with hat pulled low over burning eyes could be seen walking down a deserted Purgatory street. Something about his appearance slightly off, something not quite right, even for the frequent oldy-timer visitors that Wyatt Earp country tended to attract.

In the main roads all around him was the regular bustle of a small-town weekday morning. Neighbours called out greetings as they came back from dropping kids off at school, passing van-drivers lifted idle half hands off steering-wheels in acknowledgement of the gravity of each of their errands, and shop doors opened; bells tinkling their own hellos, and welcomes, and what can I do you for this fine winter's day?

And the mundane humanity of it all managed to warm the palid winter sun into something that, well, almost approached coziness. 

 

Except around the behatted man, where it still felt _cold_.

Around him, all life and laughter were drained, leaving only reminders that the sharp claws of ice were only a sundown away. A remembrance that frozen rubber or pipe was enough to strand a vehicle out of reception, and too far from help. That the unforgiving winter would make its annual cull of the sick and the homeless and the old.

That all the glitter, all the red and gold of winter celebrations were there for a reason. Let us whisper the sadness of losses quietly, and then thank _god_ that we at least lived through it. Look, here's bright coloured lights to chase away the long winter nights, look, here's everlasting conifer and bright red berries, look; there's life that can _survive_ this.

~

Bulshar had heard things. Things he refused to believe, when his disciples told him, things that he wanted to see with his own two eyes.

But what he had heard, if true, for the first time gave him pause. It wasn't fear, no, of course not. Fear that girl? Bulshar had been spreading glorious pain since before Wyatt was a babbling incontinent baby; this drunken slip of an idiot descendant _girl_ held no fear for him.

But caution never hurt man nor demon. Besides, he justified. He'd been a long time in the ground. This way he could get closer, plan better. There was no fear here, only a wise preparation for inflicting a better pain.

And so it was that whereas a man in a cloak and a hat had walked into the deserted alley, tall, proud, and cruel; it was a bent, old, kindly looking man who walked out; wrinkled of face, and with a amiable shuffling demeanor.

His eyes, though. Don't look too closely into his eyes.

~

Bulshar, clad from face to feet in good ol' boy, paused when he hit Main Street. He leaned heavily on a walking stick, looking carefully to his left and right, and then shuffled over to lower himself arthritically to a bench.

From there he waited, and watched. No-one giving a second look to the unremarkable sight of an old man taking a breather in his day.

He watched the town, and learnt a little about its modern comings and goings. But it wasn't for another half hour that he saw something that had him leaning forward, resting gnarled hands on the carved end of his stick, clutching tight. When he saw a girl, a girl he knew, full of smiles and an irrepressible energy, stop outside the saloon bar, accompanied by a tall female sheriff's deputy.

The girl leaned up, and kissed the red-haired deputy on the cheek. Then he saw her pause, look quickly to the left and right; and either not seeing anyone looking their way, or simply choosing not to, repeated the kiss, this time to the woman's lips. Then she dropped quickly away, pushing open the bar door, dropping a wicked wink, and leaving the officer stood stunned in place.

The deputy stood for just a second, and then shaking her head, gathered herself, and started the slow easy police officer's walk towards the station. When she got close enough to read her face, Bulshar saw two things that made him _rage_. First, though she was evidently trying to hide it in favour of the more professional blank look of a uniformed officer, he could see the smile of pure, simple, content.

 _Idiotic_ , he thought. What in this accursed town was there to be smiling for?

Second, and worse. It was true. It was _her_. It was the survivor. She had done it again. The stupid, idiot woman had somehow stumbled her way to survival. How dare she defy him yet again? How had his lieutenant ruined even this?

He watched her reach the police station, and saw her stop and wait for a battered blue and white truck to finish a skewed park out front. Out of the driver's door climbed black leather, and knee high boots, and a gun that Bulshar recognised with hatred and - no, not fear, this was _preparation_ , readiness.

She threw an apparently aggravating word to the deputy, who just sighed then nodded, walking around the truck to help the passenger get out. The other occupant emerged, a tall black man, very much alive, and as Bulshar reached out and _felt_ , very much now just a man.

 _Enough_.

Anyone watching the old man rise from the bench might have thought he moved with a speed and surety that seemed out of place for a man of his age.

But, no-one was watching. So no-one saw what happened next, as he turned and shuffled back down the side street from which he'd emerged.

"Oof - sorry sir, are you okay? I didn't see you there! Are you hurt?"

"What's your name?"

"Harry James Junior, sir. I sure am sorry, can I - "

"Harry James Junior _what_?"

"Uh. Pearson. You know, from Pearson's Farm and - hey - what are you - hey! Aah - aaggghh!"

Harry James Pearson Junior, late of Pearson's Farm and Factory Supplies Established 1882, fell bloody and lifeless to the floor.

 

~~~

 

_'Cause I gave you all I got to give, and no that ain't no way to live. I told that Devil, to take you back. I told that Devil, to take you back._

 

~~~

 

Nicole woke in the middle of a moonless night, for a second not knowing why.

Until she registered that Waverly had shuffled her way under an arm, settling in half on, half around her, her head nestled under Nicole's chin, her fingers scratching just very lightly at the fabric of her sleep shirt at her waist.

She could hear from her girlfriend's breathing that she was wide awake, but also felt a self-conscious stillness that likely meant she was trying not to wake Nicole herself. Just trying to steal a little comfort from her in the night.

Nicole shifted a little, and settled both arms around Waverly, just snug and strong enough to tell her girlfriend that she was awake too, and there.

It was quiet. Neither spoke for a minute. Until Nicole couldn't help but check.

"Everything okay, baby?"

There came no reply. Unless you counted the movement of Waverly's head at her shoulder, a subtle nuzzle that said, _Y_ _es, sort of. But I still can't talk about it yet. I just need you to hold me._

Nicole counted it, for sure, as she gave her own wordless reply, in the form of a sleepy  kiss to the crown of Waverly's head.

Because they'd always spoken like this. They'd always communicated without words.

Nicole drifted, with her whole world held safe in her arms, and remembered.

~

It was a long time ago. Before they were together, before either of them had been brave enough to even hint that _together_ might, one day, be an option.

Nicole barely knew Waverly Earp. All she knew was that when she showed up one day at the duty desk, fidgeting and spinning on the spot as her hands crept nervously on the desk, just as Nicole was packing up after the end of a long shift, something in Nicole just knew she was waiting for the question.

She looked out of sorts, and distracted, and shy, and nervous, and, well. A little sad, actually, Nicole had thought. She'd wondered if she'd had a hard day at work, or an argument with her no-good boyfriend, or something wonderfully mundane like that.

Of course, much later she'd find out it was in fact _I nearly got killed, again, and I don't think my sister trusts me, and I just know I can help her if she'd only let me, and actually I'm worried that if she doesn't, she's going to get herself killed, too._

But Nicole knew none of this yet, and so just asked simply. "Hey, Waverly. Everything okay - are you here to report something?"

Waverly had smiled. Beautifully, Nicole had thought, but with a hint of storm clouds somewhere in her eyes.

"No. No. I'm just - my sister. Funny day."

She'd pointed in the direction of the recently commandeered, mysteriously closed-doored offices of the Black Badge division.

Nicole shrugged on her coat, straightened her collar under it. Walked round the front of the desk, and looked seriously down at her.

"Ah, I'm sorry, but I think you've missed her. I saw her and Dolls head out somewhere half an hour ago."

Waverly just nodded. "Right. Of course."

Her voice was quiet, and quietly frustrated. And yes, definitely sad. God, Nicole had known Waverly all of a couple of weeks, and yet this sadness that flowed from her sometimes had Nicole's stomach just tied up in knots.

The mirror and equal to the knots she felt when she saw Waverly happy, and smile.

"Well, but I'm going off shift. And, hey, we never got that coffee, did we? How about it?"

She smiled at Waverly, trying not to look too hopelessly hopeful, but knowing that she was probably failing. And she likewise utterly failed to stop the flutter of her heart when the response came with a sudden flash of mischief, and a genuine grin in return.

"Oh, this is Purgatory, Officer. We can do a _whole_ lot better than coffee."

~

They'd walked over to Shorty's, and Waverly had run her through the spectrum of local whiskeys, from the subtle and genuinely tasty, through to some out and out gut-rot.

Waverly had giggled at the screwed-up faced winces Nicole made as she gamely took each step down the whiskey ladder; and with each drink, or perhaps it was with every time she heard Waverly's simple, joyful laugh, Nicole felt easier, and giddier, and like this saloon bar in the back end of nowhere could somehow begin to feel like home.

~

Several hours flew by, and though it wasn't yet late, they had been there since six, and even Waverly was more than a little tipsy, as she'd leaned forward and placed a hand on Nicole's arm.

Nicole had felt the touch of it like a shiver.

"One more, Officer?"

" 's _Nicole_. I shouldn't even be drinking like this in uniform. Should've taken it off."

Waverly had inexplicably blushed, but covered herself by repeating the question.

"One more, _Nicole_?"

She'd been drunk, and maybe it was drunken wishful thinking that made her think there was a flirtateous note in the way Waverly had said her name, and some sort of meaning attached to the continued touch of her hand at her wrist. It all felt so good - but. Duty called.

"No. No, I think I'm done. This has been so great. So so great..." Nicole hears even through the fog of whiskey the wistful sound in her own voice. She clears her throat. "Um. But I really should head home. I'm on an early shift tomorrow, and have got some serious sobering up to do."

There was quick flash of something disappointed, something almost hurt, as Waverly sat back, pulling her hands back into her own lap and schooling her features into a studied indifference.

"Sure, of course. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have kept you here so late."

Nicole's arm where Waverly's hand had rested felt cold, bereft.

"But, ah. We could do that coffee, after all?"

Waverly had beamed indulgently at her, and Nicole had felt all the warmth rush back in.

"There's no way you're ordering a coffee at ten o'clock at night in Shorty's, Officer. You'll get us laughed out of town."

Maybe it was the multiple whiskeys swishing round her system that made her suggest it.

"No, I mean, you could come back to mine. For a coffee. It's just - " she'd pointed helplessly, and vaguely at the door, as she held Waverly's surprised eyes.

"I mean. For actual coffee. Not, like, 'coffee'. I don't mean it like that."

And then it was definitely the whiskey. _Definitely_ not the look that Waverly was giving her, definitely not the shocked, but somehow yearning look in her eyes. It was definitely the whiskey that made her go on.

"Unless. You want me to mean it like that."

And there. It was out there. She'd not been so obvious since the overt flirting she'd led with on the day they'd first met.

Waverly held her gaze for a moment longer, and then dropped her head, blowing a breath out and then laughing, a little shakily.

"You know what, an actual coffee would be really great, Nicole."

They stood, and left the bar, and walked together towards Nicole's. And Nicole only had to stop herself from taking Waverly's hand, three, or maybe four times.

~

Of course with the brisk walk in the cold, and the practicality of making the coffee, and the polite admiration of the house, and the weird informal formality of removing boots and coats for a social visit at ten o'clock at night, some of the tension of the moment in the bar disappated.

But that was okay, because it meant they just fell easily back into the mood they'd been in before, a jovial and gentle exploration of each other's stories.

Of course, they'd find out later just how much they both left out. But they still shared truths, odd moments of honesty that had the other fall quiet.

Both of them teased each other for their dedication to their respective studies, with Nicole admitting bashfully but with no little pride that, yes, Waverly had heard right from Chrissie, Nicole had been tapped up for the Purgatory job for finishing top of her graduating class at her academy.

But she had gone on to muse out loud, almost distantly like it was a phenomena to understand rather than an event in her own life, that there had been a loneliness to her striving to be the front runner. There were other ambitious candidates in her year, sure, but no-one else seemed to give their training the weight and seriousness that she did.

She spoke with genuine bemusement about how all her peers seemed to work just hard enough to win plaudits and recommendations from their instructors, and then were happy to head off down the local cadet's bar with each other. Leaving Nicole in the firing range, practising her stance and her shot over and over again, until she _knew_ that in a real world situation, she could be absolutely confident she'd take down the bad guy, and only the bad guy. They'd not understood her attitude, and she'd not understood theirs.

Waverly had listened to all this carefully, without interrupting. And only when Nicole had fallen completely and contemplatively silent, had she shared her own story. She knew all about being top of the class, of course, but also admitted that she knew something about the loneliness of that position.

For her part, she'd confessed that she'd worked just as hard at her own popularity as Nicole had neglected hers. But it had always left her with this nagging doubt. Was the popular, prom queen, head cheerleader that everybody loved even her at all?

"Sometimes I think that if anyone ever got to know the real me, they'd run a mile." Waverly ruminated, laughing self-deprecatingly, as if to deliberately undercut the weight of scared sentiment Nicole could hear in her words.

Nicole didn't laugh, but just looked seriously at Waverly. Waited until she lifted her head and met her gaze, that unconscious plead back in her eyes. Then spoke carefully, softly.

"I think maybe I'm getting to know the real you, a little. And I don't want to run a mile."

She took a deep breath. And tipped her heart.

"In fact I'm finding I don't want to run any distance from you at all, Waverly Earp. Kinda the opposite, in fact."

Enough, for now. Waverly was biting her lip, and looking back at Nicole through a churn of emotion, and Nicole was sat close to her on her couch, quiet and steady; and the silent seconds of the late night just piled up and hung in the air. Until Waverly recovered, and gathered herself again; and steered the conversation back onto safer ground.

It grew late, and then later still, and then they were both yawning more than they were talking, when they finally had to admit it was perhaps time to call it a night. Way gone midnight, closer to one, with Nicole needing to be up in only a few hours, and Waverly herself admitting that with the day she'd had, a good night's sleep was probably in order.

So they stood, and Waverly had headed to the door and slipped on her coat, and bent to pull on her boots.

But then she straightened, and had turned to face Nicole, who had met her eyes, hands in her pockets, rocking back and forwards a little, uncertain of what was happening, and what was protocol in these situations. Their height evened out a little with Nicole in her socks, Waverly in her boots, and so looking at her from closer than ever before with an indescribable look on her face.

 _How do you say goodnight to a woman you're pretty sure you're falling headlong and stupid in love with, when that woman is busy giving you every mixed signal on the planet?_ Nicole thought.

"Well then," breathed Waverly, looking lost into Nicole's eyes.

"Well. I've had a really great night, Wave."

That dazzling smile, again. Oh, Jesus.

"Me too."

And then Waverly had stepped forward, and put her arms around Nicole's waist, and Nicole's closed automatically around her shoulders, and, oh, _Jesus_.

They stood and held each other, longer than a simple goodbye needed. Tighter than just-friends required.

And so it was the first time they spoke, wordlessly, like that. Nicole moved a hand to Waverly's head, and stroked, a gentle tangle of her fingers through the long, glossy hair. Too intimate for friends, but not pushing, not yet. _I meant what I said about coffee, earlier. If you want_.

And Waverly nestled closer in, and moved her head, a half nuzzle into Nicole's neck. _I know. And you're not wrong to ask. But I don't think I'm ready, yet. Wait for me. Will you wait for me?_

So Nicole moved her hand back, and gave one last long, gentle squeeze around Waverly's shoulders. _Of course I'll wait. Of course. Til then, I'm here for you like this. However you need me._

~

She'd meant it then, and she meant it now, as she feels Waverly make that self same movement into and against her, and she tightens her arms; her reply the same too.

And perhaps all this non-verbal communication was how she justified to herself the increasing disparity of the number of times Nicole had verbalised her love for Waverly, and Waverly, well, hadn't. 

She was _sure_ she was going to have said something, the other day. And, okay, the way they'd made love afterwards spoke for itself.

_But then why doesn't she just..._

But _nothing_ , Nicole reprimanded herself. You don't need to hear that. You've got her, and she's here, and she's yours, and you _know_ she cares about you. And you know what she's going through, and you understand the tangled path it will take before she's ready to talk about her mother. Give her _time_ , Nicole, she told herself. Give her time, and then when the time is right, _then_ you can talk about what you've learnt about your own family history.

Nicole drifts off to sleep, caught between an absolute physical content and a vague, niggling disquiet.

 

* * *

 

Wynonna Earp strides into the prison visiting room, all swagger, attitude, and an apparent indifference to the sight of her mother who this time was sat manacled hand and foot.

She slaps a hand down on the table.

"So, Mama."

Swivels the cheap plastic chair around, leans over it, and looks hard into her mother's bemused eyes.

"You are going to tell me every. Last. Thing you know about Bulshar."

She punctuates each word with a point of a finger on the table, and then straddles the chair, and sits down hard.

"Ow! Son-of-a - "

Michelle Gibson raises one eyebrow at her daughter. Who stands, wincing, and turns the chair back round to sit more gingerly down.

"They're more comfy the other way around, darlin'."

"Didn't see the side bits" mumbled Wynonna. "Anyway. As I was saying." She slaps the table again, dramatic effect now somewhat lessened. "Bulshar. What do you know, how do you know it, and how can I - we - fight him."

Michelle shrugs. "I don't know what you're talking about. Bull-what?"

"Bulshar. Otherwise known as - " for the first time Wynonna looks around at the bored looking guards sitting at each entrance to the room. She lowers her voice, leans forward and continues in a strained whisper. "As Sheriff Clootie, aka he who cursed our whole family, aka he who's been safely in the ground these past hundred years, aka, he whose followers have recently unloaded a whole _buttload_ of murder, ak-freakin'-a, he who is _back_ , and coming after me, and my family."

Michelle sits back, and says slowly and deliberately. "Well I'm sure I couldn't tell you the first thing about that."

"Bullshit."

"I thought it was Bulshar?"

"Ha ha. Very funny, Mama. You used to talk about him when I was little. Don't tell me you don't remember."

A beat, in which the two women, one in black leather, one in prison red, both with arms crossed and heads half tilted away, glare askance and in equal frustration at each other.

The elder breaks the moment by leaning forward, and flicking her eyes at the guards.

"No, I'm saying. I am _sure_ \- " an exaggerated look at the thick-set bald guard behind Wynonna - "I _couldn't_ \- " a turn to regard the thin and jittery other stood at the door to her own back - " _tell you_ the first thing about that - " a final, frustrated, and none too subtle yank and rattle of the cuffs and chains binding her wrist to a bar set in the table, " _right now."_

Another raise of her eyebrows, and the penny finally drops.

"Oh!" Wynonna sits back like a rocket, eyes wide. Then leans forward, all seriousness.

 _Revs_?, she mouths, exaggeratedly.

Mama Earp gives the quietest tut.

 _Bul_ \- Wynonna only goes to frame the first syllable when her mother's eyes flare in affirmation and warning.

"Oh. Well that is a whole other bag of donkey dick now isn't it." Wynonna says mildly, sitting back again and frowning as if noticing for the first time the chains holding her mother.

"And, how are they keeping you otherwise? Are you, erm, completely _safe_?"

Michelle rolls her eyes at the heavy emphasis her daughter outs on the word 'safe', at the same time as pointedly eyeing the doors of the room. She sighs.

"You always were the subtle one, Wynonna."

Wynonna actually sticks her tongue out, and Michelle rolls her eyes harder. Seems your child is always your child.

"Yes. Very safe. Very very safe, and very well _looked after._ "

"Well, shit. Um - good! Obviously."

Another pause, another shared look, this one bordering on truce. Eventually Wynonna shakes her head.

"Nope. No frickin' idea." She sighs. "I wish Waverly were here, she'd think of something."

At the mention of her sister Wynonna notices the hard and toughened edges of her mother's long-term con act drop right off of her, and suddenly all she sees opposite her is an old woman, full of hope and care and love.

" _Waverly_. How is your sister, is she okay? Have you got any photos?"

They'd taken Wynonna's phone off of her at the visiting desk. And anyway, it was a sore subject.

"Oh, _now_ you care about Waverly."

"Of course I care! I haven't seen a picture of her since before you left on your travels. It wasn't just you you took away from me when you left, Wynonna." And there, Mama Earp was back again, all edge and hurt and sarcasm and everything that Wynonna knew flowed right down their family line straight through and to herself.

"When  _I_ left? You left _us_ , Mama."

Another rattle of the chains. "I didn't leave you my girl, I was taken away and incarcerated, as you full well know!"

"Yeah, incarcerated for setting our barn on fire and near killing my little sister in the process."

"I was trying to protect her!"

"Protect her?" Wynonna's voice is now an incredulous yelp, and the guards take a step forward, until Wynonna drops her tone back to a quieter and bitter whisper.

"Well great job you've done with that. No, really Mama, great fucking job. You never explained what happened back then, and you never let me tell her about you, and now that I have, she won't even speak to me. And she's staying at Nicole's and she's not safe anywhere but on the homestead - "

"Who's Nicole?"

" - and I _need_ her to be safe, and Dolls is trying his best - "

"Who's Dolls?"

" - but he's still messed up from being de-lizarded and I'm all on my own and. And. Shit. I _need_ Waverly if I'm gonna fight Bulshar, because the longer I leave him to come at us the greater danger she's in. And even from the inside a locked frickin' prison cell, you've managed to fuck that all up. So good job protecting her, Mama. Good job protecting us all."

"De-lizard - what?! What the hell are you talking about? Actually, you know what, don't answer that. _Earps_. You're as bad as your father. All you think of is yourself, you don't understand what I've done to protect your sister. You don't care what sacrifices I've made."

"Well fuckin' explain them then! Better still, explain them to Waverly; I'll bring her here and you can explain it - "

"No! No! You can't bring her, you can't!"

Wynonna watches in distressed frustration as the sarcastic but calm drawl of her mother is replaced by the frantic, ticking energy of her mother gone over to mania, as she half stands, wrestling with her chains and muttering a fight with herself.

"Yes, yes, she must come - No! I've fought this long - it's _time_ \- no please - she's got to _learn_ \- "

The guards have come over, and unlock her chains from the visiting table, and drag her, struggling and spitting to the door, whilst Wynonna helplessly watches. And when she's gone, puts one elbow on the table, leans her head on her hand, and whispers bitterly to the cheap formica surface, pock-marked with cigarette burns.

"Great. Great visit, Mama. See you next time then."

 

* * *

 

Bobo turns around the three cramped feet of his circular prison, scrutinising the wet walls from a distance of an inch, in the pathetic fraction of light that leaks from the gaps in the wooden cover of the well.

He's looking for another beetle to play with. He likes the way they scuttle. Likes diverting and turning them around until they are confused and frozen in place. Then he likes pulling them from the wall, then pulling their legs off one by one, watching them struggle then stop. Then he likes crunching what's left up in his teeth. It's food, and sensation, and a distraction, of sorts.

He thinks he's gone half mad. Well, he was already half mad. Mostly mad, then. Yes. That sounds right.

And then he knows he's mad, because his hallucinations must be back, because there is a scraping sound from far above, and he's almost blinded by strong daylight suddenly pouring down from above.

He squints up, and haloed through the burning light he thinks he sees an old style hat, the shadow falling from the brim obscuring the face below.

"Holliday? Come back to gloat?"

There was a second's silence, then the hat is removed. The face is still a dark silhouette, but Bobo can see the smooth outline of a bald head.

"Nooo? What fresh hell is come for me then?"

"Robert Svane."

The voice is so cold, even in the filth and the damp of the well, Bobo shivers. He knows that voice. From long, long ago.

"Wait. I _know_ you. Yes. Wait. _Sheriff_?" Bobo's voice twists up into delighted recognition. "Sheriff Clootie? Well, _hello_." He swings the shreds of his straitjacket into a bow, then grins manically up, in a wide armed half crouch of supplication.

"Robert Svane." The voice says again, cold, imperious.

"It's Bobo, now."

A pause.

"You helped put me in the ground."

"I helped dig you out."

"You rode with Wyatt Earp."

Bobo flinches and twists.

"He abandoned me."

"You watched as his descendants tortured your kind."

"Watched?! I _?_ Fought.  _I?_ Found a way. Found an ally. Oh, yes, you wouldn't like who. But I _dug_. And I would have succeeded. But she - _she_ \- cheated. It has always been. Us? Versus the Earps. But she _cheated_. She made me soft, with my angel. She brought her friends. And they put poor Bobo down the well."

"Ah, yes. The _friends_. These stupid, idiotic humans."

Bobo grins, as wide as a madman then more.

"Ohhhhh, you've met the friends? Annoying, aren't they? But surprisingly effective. Have you found out too?"

"You know them. You know their weaknesses."

Bobo straightens, and sees the path out from his prison.

"Oh yes. Yes, I do."

"Good. My eleven have become ten, and leaderless and weak. You will be their captain."

Another grin, and another elaborate bow.

"Whatever pleases my master. Whatever brings pain to Earp."

 

* * *

 

The end of another long day, and Nicole and Waverly are tangled up together on the couch at Nicole's apartment, reading. Letting the slow peace of touch take the place of words, as the weight of another day falls slowly off of them.

A knock at the door, and Nicole sits up. A ring of the doorbell almost instantly after, and she looks to Waverly, and they roll their eyes in unison. They both recognise the impatience.

"Are you ready for her yet?"

Waverly grimaces, then shakes her head.

"Sorry. Do you mind?"

"It's okay, baby. Stay there."

Another more persistent knock, and Nicole grumbles as she heads to the door.

"Hold your horses Wynonna, I'm coming."

She opens the door but instead of letting Wynonna in, she steps out onto her porch and closes the door behind her.

"Hi, Wynonna."

"Hi, Haught-to-trot. Is my sister there?"

"Yep."

"Cool, cool." A pause, and then an irritated follow up. "Well can I come in and see her then?"

"Nope."

Wynonna raises her eyebrows in indignation. "We've been through this, Haught. You're not my sister's keeper."

"Uh, yes I kind of am. Somebody's got to be."

"Nice. Must be a great view from all the way up there on that high horse."

"Oh, grow up Wynonna. I'm just respecting what she wants. You might try that some time."

"Look, I don't have time for this - shit is going _down_ with Bulshar, right?"

Nicole can't deny that. The police station has been slammed since the murders. Multiple investigations going nowhere, Nicole and Nedley both carrying the weight of knowing full well why, whilst still going through the motions for the sake of grieving relatives, and their own lines of command.

"And my little sister has every right to be pissed at me, and I'm not asking for her to forgive me, but this is bigger than either one of us. I need her, and I need her brain, and I'm sorry but I just need her to put aside the family crap with us for one minute. Because I need her help with Mama."

Nicole raises her eyebrows. "Your mother? That sounds a lot like 'family crap' to me."

Wynonna shrugs. "It's not actually. Well, not only. It's curse business first and foremost. That's the priority right now. The family angst is just gonna have to wait."

Nicole gazes at her, levelly. "Right. Look, it's for you two to figure out, but I think maybe Waves would like it if you did prioritise the family stuff for a bit. Or at least prioritise _her_. It's not so easy for her to just set her emotions about this family stuff aside you know."

Wynonna snorts derisively. "Oh, what would you know about it."

"What would I know? I know more about this sort of thing than you realise!"

"What, little miss two-parents still upset because they're not rolling out the champagne and flowers for you becoming a cop? Boo hoo you, it must be oh so hard having live and free parents to choose to fall out with."

Nicole had long passed through her usual base level irritation with Wynonna into annoyance; and with this she tips into genuine anger. Her words start coming out in a rush, her tone rising and rising with frustration.

"It is, actually. What happened to you and Waves is unimaginable - and it's not just her that my heart breaks for by the way Wynonna, just for what it's worth - but at least there was a reason for it. It's the whole Earp curse and destiny behind it all, right? But my parents?" She scoffs, bitter and bewildered in the same breath. "They just didn't _like_ me. They don't like _me_. And that is pretty hard, actually, Wynonna. But that's not what I'm talking about."

Wynonna is staring at her, frowning. She's never seen Nicole like this, breathing hard, looking a little out of control.

"No? What are you talking about, Haught?"

Nicole's upset is so at odds with her usual calm demeanour Wynonna has consciously softened her tone; and grows worried when Nicole appears not to register this, but just carries on in the same urgent, hiccuping rush.

"No! What I'm talking about, is the fact that when I was little, nearly as little as Waves was when all your shit went down, I was taken to a music festival by my aunt and uncle, and something really, really bad happened; everyone but me died, and they told me it was a fire, but that never made sense, and it's not like what I see in my nightmares, when it's like I'm back there; because I can remember the way the woods looked, and I can hear the screaming, but there's never any smoke, or fire - and, and, I didn't _do_ anything, I just ran away, and hid - and I'm near as damnit sure now it was a cult of Bulshar massacre, and I can't talk to your sister about it because she's so hurt from what you did; and actually I can never talk to her about _anything_ , because Earp business always comes first, and, god Wynonna, I love her so so much, but - "

Nicole breaks off, puts a hand to her face, chest heaving, struggling to keep from tears. When she looks up, Wynonna is looking at her, shocked, soft, and worried.

"Hey..."

Nicole sees her gaze flicker over her shoulder, a question in her eyes, and then as she gets some sort of silent reply, the slightest relieved nod.

And Nicole turns slowly, her head bowed, ashamed as she sees Waverly standing in the now open doorway. When she finally brings herself to look up, she sees that same look of concern painted across her girlfriend's face, but ten times stronger, and overlain with an aching, tender love.

And she can't hold back the tears anymore, and they start to roll down her face as she stands there, shamefaced and trying to swallow back her sobs. Until Waverly steps forward, and puts her hands around her shoulders, and pulls her down into a crushing hug.

"Oh, _Nicole_."

~

Later, and all three women sit quietly inside, working their way down a bottle of whiskey.

They talk. All three of them, then first one pair, then another.

Nicole tells her story again, but steadier this time, more like Nicole in police officer mode. A mostly dispassionate relaying of facts and dates and events as far as she can remember them, added with the guesses and speculations she's worked out with Dolls. Her voice shakes a little, but Waverly has got one arm around her shoulders, and at the hardest parts she turns her head, and kisses Nicole's shoulder, and then just stays there, whilst her lover talks of death and survival and lies upon lies.

Wynonna sits silent, watchful, taking it all in with serious eyes, as she sips from her whiskey. And when Nicole had finished talking, and broken down again into silent shaking tears, Wynonna stands, crosses the room, stares out the window into the black night, giving her sister the privacy she needs to pull Nicole into a proper embrace. Giving them both the space to give and receive comfort, and to beg forgiveness. Heads bowed together, hands held tight.  _I'm so so sorry that happened to you. I'm so sorry you felt you couldn't tell me. I'm sorry I hid it from you. I'm sorry I didn't tell you first_.

And then, finally, it was Waverly and Wynonna's turn. Nicole of course has the policewoman's ingrained skill of being both present and absent at the same time, as this time she sits with one hand at Waverly's back; but staying withdrawn and out of the conversation as Wynonna finally opens up to Waverly, and Waverly finally listens.

She just sits, quiet in support, and listens, her only communication the gentle rub at the base of Waverly's back, the squeeze of her other hand held tight in both of Waverly's, as Wynonna talks through the betrayal, step by painful step.

 

"When it first happened, you were so young, Waves. How could we possibly explain what had really happened? And, fuck. I mean, I was young, too. And Daddy was busy filling Willa's head with the importance of the curse, and how damned sacred and special it all was, and how we should all just forget about Mama. He said she may as well have left us, and so that's what we should tell you. And you know how much I looked up to Willa, and she didn't think we should go against him and tell you either."

"Of course not." Waverly said, quietly. "She always hated me."

Wynonna had paused.

"I'm not getting into that one today, Waves. I don't think she did, but - I'm not getting into that. But then, when - shit, you know. I did it. That night. It was all so crazy baby girl, you remember?"

A tiny nod, Waverly's head bent and eyes low.

"And I was - I'm only realising this now, you know? All these years of thinking it was completely my fault and I should've done better - but I was just a kid. Twelve? That's nothing."

And at this, Waverly does look up, frustrated and loving direct into her sister's eyes. "I've been trying to tell you that since you came back, Wy."

"I know. I know. But at the time - I was the eldest left, and felt like it was all my responsibility - and I'd taken your father away from you. How could I possibly tell you that I'd also been hiding your mother?"

Waverly shook her head. Whispered. "I would've understood. You were my hero."

Wynonna takes a deep shudder of a breath, rubs her eyes. Downs her whiskey, and refills the glass, and tops up both other women's glasses, fooling neither of them - they can see she's buying time til she can steady herself enough to go on.

"You were mine too, Waves. God, you were so _smart_. I remember you were reading beyond my level, even then. And then a couple of years later, by the time I started getting in trouble, you'd overtaken me. You probably would've understood. I wish I had told you. I'm so sorry I didn't. But, it was so _hard_. I'd go visit Mama and she'd be crazy, and I was half crazy back then myself. I figured I could handle it, but you were such a good kid...I just wanted to protect you from her. And she begged me not to let you know, and refused to even consider you visiting. And Gus and Curtis agreed it was for the best - "

"Oh, _fuck!_  Gus and Curtis? I never even thought of that..."

A beat.

"Yep. Them too."

Nicole feels Waverly's hands grip so tight it hurts, and she can see her girlfriend finally on the edge of tears.

"Shitting hell, Wynonna."

"I know. I'm so sorry, baby girl. It's just - we all saw you were doing so well. When you got a bit older we thought about telling you. But you had all these friends, and you were flying at school, and it never seemed to be the right time. You'd have tests, or try-outs, or it was junior prom, or - we kept on saying, give it a few months, and then another few months. And I was all over the place, and you were doing so well - "

"I wasn't!" Waverly stands, and the tears she'd been holding back burst out, and she's shouting with all the wounded rage and fury of her sawn-off shotgun. "I wasn't doing well! If ever there was a time I needed a mother..."

She storms out of the room into the kitchen. And Wynonna and Nicole look desperate at each other, on the same side again now, and in the moment of truce neither wanting to assume, both aching to go.

Nicole concedes. "I think this one is for you, Earp."

Wynonna grimaces a nod of acknowledgment and thanks, as she stands, and follows the whirlwind of upset and anger that is her sister, whilst Nicole picks up her whiskey, and takes a wincing gulp, and sits back.

And half listens to the rising and falling voices in the kitchen. The anger, and chagrin, the sorrow, and rage. Then eventually, laughter, and then, a long long silence.

And Nicole sips her whiskey, musing on how that alone was a sign that she was part of the Earp family now. Who has a cupboard full of emergency hard liquor just ready to bring out at a moment's notice? Earps, and those inextricably linked to them.

The silence of her musing is broken, as she hears something that in that moment sounds glorious to her ears. A simple bickering, as the two sisters saunter back in the room like nothing untoward had come to pass these past hours, or ever.

"Like I'm trusting your truck and it's shanky-ass non-repairs. Who did you get to apply the duct tape this time?"

"Don't you worry about the truck, she's good as new. It's your driving I'm scared of. It's winter in Purgatory Waves, not summer bumper cars at the fair."

"Oh sure you can talk, you took out half my graduating class that year."

Nicole stretches her arm out along the sofa, and her heart thuds hard in relief when Waverly just folds herself unthinkingly and easily against her side.

"Pfft. They deserved it."

"Tell you what. We'll see who's up first, huh? You wanna bet it's going to be you?"

"Don't you take that tone with your elder and better."

"Er - guys?" Nicole was relieved to hear normal Earp sister service resumed, but didn't particularly appreciate being completely ignored in her own home.

"I'm sorry sweetie." Waverly turns, and smiles, and though her eyes are still red and puffy, Nicole can see how much closer Waverly is to herself. "We're going to visit Mama tomorrow, see if we can come up with a plan."

"Tomorrow? I'm working Waves, you know that."

"Yeah. But - I think this is kinda an Earp thing."

Waverly has the decency to look ashamed. But, shit. She was right. If ever there was something that was for the sisters alone.

"Okay. Well, if you're sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Okay. Okay. Wynonna, do you need to stay? I can make up some sheets on the couch?"

"No need. I'm going to go and see if I can scare up a bed at Shorty's."

Waverly grins, knowing this means a bed with Doc. "Night then, sis."

"Night, baby girl."

Nicole walks her to the door, and at the threshold Wynonna turns, and tilts her head.

"You okay, Nicole?"

"Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Wynonna."

Wynonna reaches, and puts an awkward hand on Nicole's upper arm for a moment. And then turns, and leaves.

 

* * *

 

Bobo stretches out his arms, looking resplendent in fresh fur coat, hands decked again in heavy gold sovereign rings, and wild hair tamed just a little with a freshly shaved undercut. His eyes glitter manic as ever in the light from the warehouse's brazier fire, but otherwise he looks almost calm.

"So then. I have brought you here, and restored you. Pay me back. What is your service to me."

Bobo has benefitted from the strength of Bulshar's power, and knows he can suffer from it just as easily.

"The friends. The pesky, interfering friends. You need to take them away from her, one by one."

"Yes? And where do I start."

Bobo pauses, a long time, seemingly wrestling with himself.

Self-interest wins.

"The sister. You start with the sister. Destroy her, and everything else will be so much easier."

"Fine. It is done. You will take the men in the morning and kill her."

"No. I didn't say kill. I said _destroy_. And I know how. Oh, yes, Ward told me you see? He told me about the mad wife, and why she was locked away. The demon must be released, and the demon must play."

"Oh?" Bulshar sounds interested. "Tell me more."

 

* * *

 

Wynonna and Waverly pull up to the prison in Waverly's cherry red jeep, get out, and are let in to the visitor processing room.

But when they show their ID a bored looking prison guard shakes his head.

"Gibson? You've missed her. She's been taken to a higher security facility."

"What?" Wynonna is incandescent. "You can't just do that!"

The guard just sits back and gazes impassively at her. "Take it up with the warden."

"I'll take it up with your - hey!"

Wynonna complains as Waverly pushes her aside, and leans over with a polite tight smile to the guard.

"We would like to take it up with the warden, then. Would you dial him please?"

The guard rolls his eyes, but dials a number into his phone and passes it over to Waverly.

"Warden? This is Waverly Earp, here to visit Michelle Gibson. I understand she's been moved? Uh huh? I see. Uh huh? Well, you can't do that. No, I mean you literally can't do that. Under regulation seven subsection thirteen a cooling off period of forty-eight hours and a separate assessment of two clinical psychologists must be carried out before moving - no, no, I understand that, but with all the bad press last year with the deaths in custody I would have thought a man in your precarious position might be worried about news of more poor practice reaching the board - well yes I might - okay. Thank you, we are very much obliged. Now? Thank you. Thank you. Bye then!"

She hands the receiver back to a stunned looking guard, and smiles smugly at an equally stunned looking Wynonna.

"She's on her way. We can meet her outside."

"Regulation seven subsection thirteen?" Wynonna says incredulously.

Waverly shrugs. "I've been reading up."

"You are _such_ a little freak. Come on then."

Wynonna puts an arm around her sister's shoulders, and they head outside to await the long overdue moment of Waverly meeting their mother.

~

Which when it comes, doesn't go down the way any of them could imagine.

When the prison van pulls in through the gates, Waverly goes from trembling with nerves to practically vibrating. Wynonna still has one arm around her shoulders, but when the guards slide open the door and haul the red-jumpsuited occupant out, Waverly slips from her grasp and steps forward.

Their eyes meet, and it's like the whole world stops for a second.

"Mama?"

"Waverly? Darlin'?"

Waverly's voice is shy, eager; and her mother's holds every bit of amazed loving care she'd dreamed of for so many years.

And then all hell breaks loose.

"No. No! Darlin', you can't be here, you can't see me!"

"It's okay Mama, we'll figure it out - "

"No! Stay away! Do you hear me, go!"

Waverly is inching forward, and Michelle is struggling bodily and desperately in her chains as it takes both prison guards to haul her step by reluctant step forwards towards the prison, and towards her two daughters; the eldest of whom now chimes in.

"Chill out Mama, you really want this to be the first impression you leave with her?"

Wynonna's grabbed one of Waverly's arms, but they're all so close now, and Waverly is a creature of touch, and her mother is fighting and jerking, and so Waverly reaches out a hand, to comfort or still her -

And when she touches her mother's arm, Michelle _screams_.

It's an unearthly sound, the combination of human anguish and something not human at all. And it's the cue for it all to happen at once: Waverly recoils and falls back in horror. Wynonna darts forward, on instinct. Michelle gives one almighty heave, and breaks free of the guards' grips, and with a dive at Wynonna's waist pulls Peacemaker from its holster.

Wynonna is yelling that she can't use it, but the prison guards don't know that, one of whom is sprinting off to raise the alarm, the other one with a gun to his head from point blank range fumbling to unlock the chain at Michelle's wrists, and then to hand the keys of the truck over to the shaking, sweating prisoner.

"Mama, stop, what are you doing, we can work this out, _please_ stop."

Waverly's begging, but her mother's resolute as she climbs in the truck and slams the door shut.

"I'm sorry girls. But I told you not to come. I _told_ you not to bring her, Wynonna."

And with that, the van is pulling away, and a long barrel is waving out the window at the guard at the gate, and the double security doors are opened, and the van is away.

And Waverly turns to her sister, with tears of disbelief and the crushing sadness of all her dreams crumbled down to nothing. Wynonna sighs, and steps forward, and pulls her shaking little sister into the longest, strongest big sister hug she can manage.

An identical embrace to that of Nicole's kitchen the night before, and identical words.

"She's nuts, Waves. She's your mother and she loves you, but she's fucking nuts."

 

 ~

 

Wynonna pulls Waverly's jeep back in to the Homestead. She sees Nicole's beat them to it, Waverly having asked her over, if not explaining what for. And then sees the dark figure smoking on the porch - wonderful, Doc too.

"The good whiskey's still out in the barn?" Waverly asks.

"Yup. Looks like our visitors are here - see you inside?"

Waverly steps into the barn, hands thrust deep in her pockets and distracted by her own churning emotions. But when she's fully inside she sees the pentangle pattern of candles - and the wild haired figure crouched there.

"Mama?"

"Get away!"

"What are you doing?"

"The demon! Waverly. Get away! Go! Now!!"

"No! Mama, please just calm down, okay?"

"It's too late. The demon's here."

"What?" Waverly's voice trembles as she asks the question she doesn't want to ask. "Is it - is it me?"

"No, sweetheart. But she came for you."

Michelle raises the gun to point behind her, and Waverly turns. And screams.

 

And then.

 

And then.

 

 

All is well.

 

Jolene is there, and look, she's made cup-cakes! Waverly's absolute favourite.

And Nicole is sitting next to her at the homestead table, and Doc too. They are all enjoying the amazing baking display in front of them. Jolene, how thoughtful of lovely Jolene to make all this just for them! After such a tough day. Oh what a tough day. Still, 'no day so salty a little sweetness can't even it up', as Jolene always says!

Oh look, here's Wynonna too! How nice! Waverly smiles at her sister, not understanding why she's looking so grumpy. Grumpy guts Wynonna, Jolene call her. But she's eating one of Jolene's brownies, and there. That's better.

Jolene explains the bad news. A demon is coming to kill her. It's sad, but Waverly is used to that by now. Nicole pouts, and Wynonna screws her face up in confusion - what will they do?

But lovely Jolene comes to the rescue. She will help them. Of course she will!

"Oh, Jolene. What would we do without you?" Wynonna says.

And they all laugh, as Jolene reassures them. 

"Oh, I bet you'd all just die. You all just _die!"_

What a lovely evening!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed the Earp sister processing around the Mama Earp stuff. That was one of the bigger things that felt like a hole in early season 3 for me, and one of the main motivators for this fic. Hope I've done it justice.
> 
> Having said that, quick shout-out to Dom's acting in the show's scene where Waverly first meets her mother. Ripped my heart right in half.
> 
> Now. I've got a real dilemma on what to do about 3x05. I love, love, *love* the Jolene episode just as it is on the show, and don't want to touch a single hair on its beautiful gut-wrenching head. So I'm definitely not gonna re-write it.
> 
> I am like 90% sure I'm just gonna say 'go rewatch 3x05' instead of posting a chapter for it. But I do have one or two half-arsed ideas that I could write around the episode. But then that definitely wouldn't flow or come across like a full episodic chapter like I'm trying to do here.
> 
> So, what do you reckon? Don't try to improve on perfection and just skip it, or whack in a little bridge chapter just to keep the story's momentum going?

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning on updates - this one's gonna be a looong time in the writing. I'm pretty sure I'll finish - I've got the ending mapped out already and I *really* want to get there. But yeah, this is probably going to be a most-of-the-hiatus type project.
> 
> Each chapter will cover a full episode, and the idea is then that each should stand relatively well on its own. So hopefully less of a drag waiting for the next update.
> 
> But those completists out there - you might want to check back on this some time next year ;-)


End file.
